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Literary Ibeartbstones 

studies of the Home-Life of 
Certain Writers and TlAirvl^ers 



WILLIAM COWPER 



r^ 




WILLIAM COWPER 



William Cowper 



bV 



MARION HARLAND 

AUTHOR OF "some COLONIAL HOMESTEADS AND THEIR 
STORIES," "where GHOSTS WALK," ETC. 



u^. n 



ILLUSTRATED 



G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
NEW YORK AND LONDON 

Zhc Iknicticrbocker press 

iSgg 




'Pf^ 



43706 

Copyright, iSgg 



G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
Entered at Stationers' Hall, London 



TWO COPIES RECEIVED. 




•eCOND CX>PV, 



Ube Iftnfcfcerbocher (press, fiew Korft 






PREFATORY AND DEDICATORY 



THESE studies of the characters and 
home-lives of certain people famous 
in the judgment of the public, have to do 
with what they ivere, rather than with 
what they did. I have essayed no critical 
analysis of the works that won renown for 
them. Believing that every human life is a 
complete story in itself, full of movement 
and interest, I have tried to disentangle the 
personal element from the network in 
which circumstance involved it, and to 
tempt my reader to regard the man or 
woman as a fellow-being, rather than as an 
abstract product of the times in which he 
or she lived and wrought. 

I have an hereditary right to the more 
than friendly interest I feel in William 
Cowper. One hundred years ago, save 
one, my maternal grandmother, a woman 
of rare culture and fine literary taste, in 



iv Prefatory and Dedicatory 

tender compliment to her favourite poet, 
changed to '*01ney" the hidian name of 
the Virginia homestead to which she was 
taken as a bride. Cowper's death, in 1800, 
produced a profound sensation among his 
admirers on this side of the Atlantic. Every 
turn in his sorrowful pathway was almost 
as familiar in the reading circles of America 
as in England. As a child, I heard him 
talked of as if he had lived and written and 
suffered upon the adjoining plantation to 
the Virginia Olney. The first bit of sacred 
verse I committed to memory was learned 
from a well-thumbed copy of Olney Hymns, 
once the property of my sainted grand- 
mother. At ten years of age I knew by 
heart whole pages of The Task, and dozens 
of Cowper's shorter poems, incited to the 
undertaking by stories of that blessed 
woman's fondness for the gentle poet's 
writings. I learned to love him before I 
really comprehended who and what he 
was, also to associate his name with that 
of the ancestress who died long before I 
was born. 

It seems, then, good in my eyes, and not 
a sentimental fantasy, that this loving study 
of William Cowper as man and friend 



Prefatory and Dedicatory v 

should be dedicated to the sweet memory 
of the gracious gentlewoman from whom, 
as I like to believe, 1 have inherited my 
love of letters, and whatever talent for 
story-making and story-telling I may 
possess. 

Among those to whom I am indebted for 
assistance in the preparation of this work 1 
name with pleasure Rev. J. P. Langley, 
Vicar of Olney, now resident in the Vicar- 
age once tenanted by John Newton ; Mr. 
Thomas Wright of Olney, the best living 
authority upon all that pertains to the life 
and writings of William Cowper, and Bev- 
erly Chew, Esq., of New York, who has 
courteously placed at my disposal certain 
rare and valuable prints used in illustrating 
these pages. 

Marion Harland. 

SUNNYBANK, PoMPTON, N. J. 



CONTENTS 

;hapter page 

I. BIRTH AND INFANCY — HIS MOTHER'S 

DEATH I 

II. LIFE OF A SCHOOL FAG — WESTMIN- 
STER AND BRIGHTER DAYS . .12 

III. LAW STUDIES — THEODORA — FA- 

THER'S INFLUENCE AND DEATH . 24 

IV. '' PUSH-PIN '■ — HEREDITARY GLOOMS 

— DR. JOHN DONNE . . . -35 

V. GLOOM DEEPENS INTO MANIA — AT- 
TEMPTED SUICIDE — Theodora's 

CONSTANCY . . . -50 

VI. LIFE IN DR. cotton's ASYLUM — RE- 

COVERY AND CONVERSION . '. 62 

VII. LIFE IN HUNTINGDON — THE UNWINS. 76 

VIII. MR. UNWIN'S death — ^JOHN NEW- 
TON — LIFE AT OLNEY . -91 



viii Contents 

CHAPTER PAGE 

IX. QUIET LIFE AT OLNEY — DEATH OF 
JOHN COWPER — OLNEY HYMNS — 
SECOND ATTACK OF INSANITY . IO4 

X. THE FATAL DREAM — CONVALESCENCE 

— FIRST VOLUME OF POEMS . 1 20 

XI. MRS. UNWIN — LADY AUSTEN — ^JOHN 

GILPIN 134 

XII. LADY AUSTEN'S FLIGHT — RENEWED 
CORRESPONDENCE WITH LADY 
HESKETH 149 

XIII. GIFTS FROM "ANONYMOUS" — LADY 

HESKETH'S ARRIVAL IN OLNEY . 161 

XIV. MR. Newton's reproof of 

" WORLDLY GAYETIES " RE- 
MOVAL TO WESTON LODGE . 173 

XV. DEATH OF WILLIAM UNWIN — HOMER 

AND HARD WORK — GATHERING 
CLOUDS l8s 

XVI. SIX PEACEFUL, BUSY YEARS — MRS. 
UNWIN's ILLNESS — SAMUEL TEE- 
DON — VISIT TO EARTH AM . -195 

XVII. HOMER "MY MARY ! " — FAMILIAR 

DEMON — MRS. UNWIN's DEATH — 
THE END 210 

XVIII. cowper's writings . . . 228 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



"AGE 



WILLIAM COWPER . . Frontispiece l^ 

cowper's mother . . . . 4 ^ 

Frotn J miniature. 

COWPER COAT-OF-ARMS . . . 34(/ 

JOHN DONNE 44 1^ 

From an old print in the possession of 
Beverly Chew, Esq., of New York. 

ORCHARD SIDE ; COWPER'S HOUSE IN OL- 

NEY FOR THIRTEEN YEARS . . . 96 i^ 

cowper's gallery PEW IN OLNEY 

CHURCH 1041^ 

JOHN DONNE II 6 i. 

From an old print in the possession of 
Beverly Chew, Esq., of New York. 

OLNEY VICARAGE I46»^ 



X Illustrations 

PAGE 

LADY AUSTEN IN THE CHARACTER OF 

LAVINIA 1 32 V 

From a dv awing by IV. Harvey from the 
original by Romney. 

COWPER's SUMMER-HOUSE OR "BOUDOIR" I72V 

WESTON LODGE NEAR OLNEY ; COWPER'S 

HOME FOR NINE YEARS . . .216" 




WILLIAM COWPER 




WILLIAM COWPER 

CHAPTER I 

BIRTH AND INFANCY — HIS MOTHER'S DEATH 

THE Reverend John Cowper, D.D., Rec- 
tor of the Parish of Great Birkhamp- 
stead in Hertfordshire, England, was not a 
young man when his wife died, November 

13, 1737- 

Scanty as are the fragments of her per- 
sonal history that have drifted to us — dis- 
tant over a century and a half from the 
date of her son William's birth, — they en- 
able us to fashion a pleasing, and what is 
probably a tolerably faithful, portrait of her 
character and habits. Anne Cowper, the 
daughter of Roger Donne, Esq., of Ludham 
Hall in the county of Norfolk, was a gentle- 
woman ingrain. She had royal blood in 
her veins, claiming descent from Henry III. 



2 William Cowper 

through more than one branch of her fam- 
ily. A more immediate ancestor was ** that 
late learned and Reverend Divine, John 
Donne, Dr. in Divinity, & Deane of S. 
Paul's, London," the eccentric poet eulo- 
gised by Izaak Walton. Believers in in- 
alienable heredity will lay hold of this 
circumstance as an interesting link in a 
nobler than regal succession, even the trans- 
mission of holy fire from soul to soul. Of 
this significant relationship, whose bearing 
upon the destiny of the subject of our 
biography has been strangely overlooked 
by the writers of the many Lives of Wil- 
liam Cowper, 1 shall speak more at length 
in subsequent chapters. 

Three children were born to Dr. and Mrs. 
Cowper within two years after their mar- 
riage, a son who was born and died in 1729, 
and twins, a boy and a girl, born in the fol- 
lowing year, neither of whom lived more 
than a few days. On November 26, 1731, 
the cry of another new-born baby broke 
the silence of the Rectory. A fortnight 
and three days later, "William, the son of 
John Cowper, D.D., rector of this Parish 
and Anne his wife, was baptised " in the 
old church. A second daughter and a 



Birth and Infoncy 3 

fourth son, born in 1733, and 1734 did not 
survive the first half-year of their lives. 

William Cowper was, then, for the greater 
part of the years lying between his birth 
and that of his brother John, who entered 
the world in 1737, the only nursling in the 
oft-smitten household. He was within two 
days of his sixth birthday and Baby John 
was but a week old when they were left 
motherless. 

The fragile, high-born wife of the Birk- 
hampstead Rector died *' with all her music 
in her," so far as verbal or written utter- 
ance went. But, besides the mysterious 
and unconscious influence flowing from the 
mother-mind and disposition into the sen- 
sitive thing to be born of her soul as of her 
body, Mrs. Cowper left indestructible traces 
of her personality upon her boy's charac- 
ter as in his memory. 

By a stroke here, and a touch there, a 
dash of high lights deepening the sombre 
background, the son sketches for us the 
picture of the bright, brief years during 
which they belonged to one another. 

"\ can truly say," he wrote when she 
had lain for fifty years in the chancel of her 
husband's church, "that not a week passes 



4 William Cowper 

(perhaps I might with equal veracity say a 
day) in which I do not think of her. Such 
was the impression her tenderness made 
upon me, 'though the opportunity she had 
for showing it was so short." 

His lines On the Receipt of my Mother's 
Picture (which we wonder was not given 
to him before he was a grey-haired, broken 
man of fifty-six) are too well known to 
need repetition here. He had not forgotten 
one feature of that lovely Long Ago. His 
mother kept him much with her, and very 
close to her, contrary to the custom of 
higher-class English mothers with their 
young children. Instead of the nursery in 
the topmost storey of the well-appointed 
Rectory, and the oversight and companion- 
ship of a respectable middle-aged nurse, 
we have a view of the mother in her dress- 
ing-room, and the little fellow, already wise 
beyond his years, and made ''old-fash- 
ioned " by the lack of companions of his 
own age, seated upon a stool at her feet, 
nestling in the folds of her gown. 

" When playing with thy vesture's tissued flowers, 
The violet, the pink and jessamine, 
I pricked them into paper with a pin, — 
And thou wast happier than myself the while, 
Wouldst softly speak, and stroke my head and smile." 




/ ''$. 




COWPER'S MOTHER 

(FROM A miniature) 



Birth and Infancy 5 

The smile that approved his skill in tracing 
the pattern, the loving passage of her hand 
over his hair, the patient hearing of his 
prattle — are lifelike and exquisitely ren- 
dered. Never too busy to heed what he 
was doing, never so preoccupied by her 
own musings and talks that she could not 
spare a thought for the solitary survivor of 
her six babies, — she grew more tenderly 
solicitous with the nearing of the time 
when there would be another claimant 
upon mother-love and motherly offices : 

" Thy nightly visits to my chamber made, 

That thou mightest know me safe and warmly laid ; 

Thy morning bounties ere I left my home, 

The biscuit, or confectionery plum, 

All this, and more endearing still than all, 

Thy constant flow of love that knew no fall ; " 

— are some of the "high lights" alluded 
to just now. 

Gently and gradually he was prepared 
for the coming change. Her own hands 
would wrap him in the scarlet cloak, and 
settle upon his sunny head the velvet cap 
that arrayed him for his first day at school. 
Other mothers' eyes moisten in contem- 
plating the group at the Rectory door. 
The small, delicately featured face of the 



6 William Cowper 

child, alight with gleeful pride in the "bau- 
ble coach " built for his express use ; the 
yearning smile, more sad than tears, in the 
sweet eyes bent downward upon her boy, 
as both bade farewell to the babyhood he 
left behind in his trial-trip into the wide, 
cold world ; the "Gardener Robin," dele- 
gated to draw the young master to "the 
dame-school," consequential in the sense 
of the trust reposed in him ; — there is 
nothing more common than the scene in 
our changeful, working-day world, and not 
many things more beautiful. 

Day after day, the little equipage was 
drawn along the public road to the school 
where the Rector's son was. a personage of 
distinction ; each afternoon home-coming 
was an event to the pupil, elate with tales 
of his new associates and of lessons that 
were never a labour, and sure of the sym- 
pathy of his confidante. By what system 
of time-keeping the mother told off the 
slow-footed days in her calendar, those can 
divine who, like her, have waited with 
what patience faith and hope can lend, 
for what may bring added wealth of hap- 
piness, or the blank end of earthly expecta- 
tion and desire. 



His Mother's Death 7 

Was it upon his return from school in 
the twilight of an English November day 
that William Cowper was told he had 
a little brother called for their father, — 
John ? And how, after the week of ban- 
ishment from his mother's room, was the 
news broken to him — and was it suddenly 
or tactfully — that his mother was dead ? 
As a clergyman's son, he knew already 
what death meant. In the anguish of his 
unchildlike grief, he was, it would seem, 
left to the care of servants, and they, how- 
ever sincerely compassionate of the lonely 
little fellow, had the fondness of their guild 
for the ghoulish details of ''an affliction in 
the family." The boy, always abnormally 
sensitive, and now stricken to his heart's 
core and shuddering in the arctic night 
that had swallowed up his summer, was 
led to the nursery window to see the cof- 
fin lifted into the hearse, and the hearse 
driven away to the churchyard. The 
strokes of the tolling bell, keeping time 
to the measured crunch of the horses' hoofs 
upon the gravel, and the horrid rumble 
of the mourning coaches, unlike any other 
sound known to conventional civilisation, 
— were as distinct in the son's ears, after 



8 William Cowper 

,the lapse of five decades, as on that 
"burial-day." 

The passion of weeping that succeeded 
the hysterical 'Mong, long sigh" with 
which the child rushed away from the 
window probably saved his reason. The 
maids, — we hear nothing of other comfort- 
ers, — alarmed by the excess of his sorrow, 
cheated him by prophecies of his mother's 
return '* to-morrow," if he would be good 
and patient. A commonplace child would 
have seen through the flimsy deception. 
The grey-haired poet explains, as simply as 
if still a boy of six, that his credence of the 
servants' tale was born of his agonised 
longing — the strong necessity of having his 
mother back again — the utter impossibility 
of living without her. The pitying ruse 
was a prolonged strain upon young nerves 
and strength. 

" By expectation everyday beguiled, 
Dupe of To-morrow, even from a child ! 
Tlius many a sad To-morrow came and went, 
Till, all my stock of infant sorrows spent, 
I learned at last submission to my lot, 
But, 'though I less deplored thee, ne'er forgot." 

Sorrow and the burial-day ; the missing, 
the longing, false hopes, and despair, were 



His Mother's Death 9 

bitten into his soul by the slow corrosion of 
the many sad To-morrows. 

Celibate cynics sneer at this, our day, as 
"the Children's Age." That we have 
gained immeasurably in common humanity 
upon that of five generations ago, is mani- 
fest in the indignant inquiry of the least 
sentimental reader of the piteous tale before 
us, as to the whereabouts, and doings, and 
feelings of the Reverend John Cowper, 
D.D., while the cruel trick was practised 
upon his son. 

The Rector of Great Birkhampstead 
''came of the Whig nobility of the robe." 
Spencer Cowper, his father, was a Judge 
of the Court of Common Pleas, eminent 
for learning and personal attractions. Sir 
William Cowper, uncle of the Reverend 
John, and for whom our poet was named, 
was Lord Chancellor in the reign of Queen 
Anne and in that of her successor, George 
I. Spencer Cowper's choice of the Church 
for his second son was not guided by ap- 
preciation of especial fitness in John for 
the profession. 

Professor Goldwin Smith says of the 
religion of John Cowper's times : 

" The Church was little better than a political force, 



10 William Cowper 



cultivated and manipulated by political leaders for their 
own purposes. The Bishops were either politicians or 
theological polemics, collecting trophies of victory over 
free-thinkers as titles to higher preferment. The inferior 
clergy, as a body, were far nearer in character to Trul- 
liber than to Dr. Primrose ; coarse, sordid, neglectful of 
their duties, shamelessly addicted to sinecurism and 
pluralities, fanatics in their Toryism and in attachment 
to their corporate privileges, cold, rationalistic in their 
preachings, if they preached at all." 

Without accepting this composite photo- 
graph as a presentment of the incumbent 
of Birkhampstead, we extract from the 
insight thus gained into the temper and 
practice of his generation some drops of 
tolerant oil to be applied to our further con- 
sideration of his treatment of the mother- 
less child. 

William Cowper's picture of the board- 
ing-school boy in Tirocinium has a reminis- 
cence of his early home-life in the pleading 
with a father not to 

" hire a lodging in a house unknown 
For one whose tenderest thoughts all hover round your 
own." 

The reference to the home-bred lad who 

"takes, with Tearless ease, 
His favourite stand between his father's knees," 



His Mother's Death 



1 1 



introduces a shadowy possible figure of the 
Reverend John into the pretty domestic 
scene of the mother's dressing-room. And 
what more natural, we reason, than that 
their great common sorrow may have drawn 
out the ' ' tenderest thoughts " of each for the 
other, when father and son were left with- 
out other society in the desolate Rectory, 
made more desolate by the wail of the hap- 
less baby who was the price of the mother's 
life ? If, in such favouring circumstances, 
the intercourse of the two ever approxi- 
mated the sweet familiarity of "chum- 
ship " that has been the salvation of many 
a motherless boy and the solace of many a 
widower, the blessed season was very 
short. 




CHAPTER II 

LIFE OF A SCHOOL FAG — WESTMINSTER AND 
BRIGHTER DAYS 

MR. GOLDWIN SMITH'S Cowper be- 
longs to the English Men of Letters 
Series, and has to do with the writer of 
essays, poems, and translations, rather than 
with the individual man. Yet the great, 
warm heart of the able scholar speaks in a 
sentence which strikes the colour out of our 
dream-pictures, and raises the curtain upon 
a long act of brutal realism, fraught with 
tragical consequences: 

"At six years of age this little mass of timid and 
quivering sensibility was, in accordance with the cruel 
custom of the time, sent to a large boarding-school. 

" The change from home to a boarding-school is bad 
enough now ; it was worse in those days." 

How much worse, it is hard for the Ameri- 

12 



Life of a School Fag 1 3 

can reader of any age to comprehend, even 
with the help of writers like Miss Edge- 
worth and Dickens. In Maria Edgeworth's 
Moral Tales we have the story of a fag 
who was sent, shivering, on bitter winter 
nights, through a dormitory containing 
twenty beds, to warm each for his luxuri- 
ous masters by lying between the sheets 
until his body had taken off the chill. The 
wretched human warming-pan performed 
his duty nightly until released by the return 
of warmer weather. 

Sweet Anne Cowper could never have 
contemplated the banishment of her darling 
to such a region, or she would not have 
indulged him and herself in a course of pet- 
ting which was the worst possible prepara- 
tion for a fag's life. " I had hardships of 
different kinds to conflict with, which 1 
felt more sensibly in proportion to the 
tenderness with which I had been treated 
at home," is the sufferer's own story of this 
time. 

In rude contrast to his mother's watchful 
love, Robin's proud protection, and the 
maids' fond, if injudicious spoiling, was 
the lot of the youngest boy — a ''mother's 
boy," at that — hurled into the midst of a 



14 William Cowper 

pack of nascent tyrants. He was the sport 
of all, the slave of one. A fifteen-year-old 
cub chose him as his fag, and broke his own 
infamous record by the ingenuity of his 
barbarities. 

The hapless butt of these could never 
allude to them in his manhood without a 
sick shiver. Nor could he trust himself to 
enumerate the details of his school-experi- 
ences. That he was beaten, half-starved, 
and set about degrading and menial tasks 
beyond his strength, was but a small part 
of his grievances. The victim says of his 
brutal senior: 

" He had, by his savage treatment of me, impressed 
such a dread of his figure upon my mind that 1 well 
remember being afraid to lift up my eyes upon him, 
higher than his knees, and that 1 knew him by his shoe- 
buckles better than any other part of his dress." 

He adds an ejaculatory prayer to which 
less sanctified readers will be slow in re- 
sponding " Amen ! " 

" May the Lord pardon him, and may we meet in 
glory ! " 

It is argued in extenuation of a system 
that admitted of such outrages that it 



Life of a School Fag 1 5 

''made boys hardy" and helped on with 
the manufacture of English pluck, honoured 
by powerful nations and feared by weak. 
A lad who had roughed it at school entered 
the world, of which the school was sup- 
posed to be a type and foretaste, with a 
heart, a head, and a fist for any fate. It 
was the principle of the survival of the fit- 
test reduced to hourly and heroic practice. 
The study of general principles was the 
specialty of the century. Appreciation of 
the importance oi personal traits and of the 
value and the danger of personal peculiari- 
ties was reserved for more merciful mod- 
ern educators. Tough and tender went 
into one and the same mill, the wisest pre- 
ceptors having no misgiving that what 
hardened stout fibres might destroy delicate 
textures. 

It is superfluous to subjoin, after reading 
and hearing of William Cowper's early 
school-days, that he carried the scars of 
that terrible period to his grave, with the 
graver effects of disordered nerves and 
physical cowardice. All that could be 
done in after-life for the broken and jarred 
mechanism was to put it together so that it 
would work for a time and after a fashion. 



i6 William Cowper 

"God," says Dr. Holmes, " would never 
create a hunchback and then damn him for 
not sitting straight." 

A ruthful truism we shall have occasion 
to recall at every turn of the life we are 
following. 

The lad's eyes failed him when he had 
been two years at school. Floating specks 
danced between his vision and his books, 
and blurred the familiar outlines of his ty- 
rant's shoe-buckles. It would not have 
been surprising had he wept himself blind, 
and cold, nervousness, and unsuitable food 
doubtless took their evil part in the work. 
His father and the family physician decided 
to place him under the care of a Mr. Disney, 
an oculist of some eminence, whose wife 
was his fellow-practitioner. Mrs. Disney 
seems to have had especial charge of the Rec- 
tor's son. Under another alien roof, the boy, 
practically homeless and orphaned, — al- 
though nominally the possessor of a parent 
who paid his bills for lodgings, board, and 
medical services, — passed two compara- 
tively comfortable years. He gained health 
there, and some degree of robustness. It was 
to the oculist's interest to keep his patient 
in good physical case, and not his business 



Brighter Days 17 

to interfere with the boy's personal liberty. 
The tortured nerves and wearied frame 
were ''rested out"; the shadow of the 
tyrannical taskmaster passed from his 
spirit, and something of the natural, glad- 
some youth that should belong to his years 
awoke in him. 

At this period of his early life, he became 
intimate with his cousins Harriet, Anne, 
Elizabeth, and Castres, the children of 
the Reverend Roger Donne, his mother's 
brother. Their home at Catfield in Nor- 
folk was also his during his holidays while 
at school and with the Disneys. It is inter- 
esting to note, in this connection, that Anne 
(afterward Mrs. Bodham) was the donor of 
his mother's picture to him after they had 
both passed middle life. The presumption 
is that she came into possession of the 
treasure as her aunt's namesake. 

He was but ten years old when he was 
enrolled in the public school of Westmin- 
ster, an educational institution of high repu- 
tation, and always full of gentlemen's sons. 

At no other period of his life was he so 
nearly the normal boy in body and in spir- 
its as in the ensuing four years. There 
was bullying in this renowned school, and 



i8 William Cowper 

plenty of it, the weaker and smaller lads 
being, as always, the chief sufferers. Re- 
ports, private and unofficial, of atrocities 
winked at by the authorities, and uncon- 
demned by public opinion, are before us 
that cast into the shade the worst cases of 
"hazing" ever glossed over in American 
colleges. 

Cowper was never robust, and never 
physically brave. We are naturally curious 
to learn to what he owed immunity from 
the persecutions which the knowledge of 
these deficiencies would excite among the 
lawless and belligerent young animals by 
whom he was surrounded. He played 
football and gained a certain degree of pro- 
ficiency in that barbaric form of recreation, 
convincing proof of marvellous improve- 
ment in his bodily powers ; he was a good 
cricketer and eager to take the field when- 
ever a game was called. His surprise at 
the awakening into this new life is pathetic 
when one considers that the average Eng- 
lish boy then took frolic and health and the 
love of fun of whatever description as a 
matter of course, a development as natural 
as the taste for toffey and half-holidays and 
robbing apple-orchards. He had not known 



Brighter Days 19 

what it was to be happy for so long that 
gladness wore an unfamiliar face. The 
most Cowperish touch in his recital of the 
halcyon Westminster days is an incident 
that befell him one night in passing through 
a churchyard. 

He relates it with the comment : *M had 
become so forgetful of mortality that, sur- 
veying my activity and strength, and ob- 
serving the evenness of my pulse, I began 
to entertain, with no small complacency, 
a notion that perhaps I might never die." 

The sunken graves and headstones 
among which he tramped as a short-cut 
home, after a joyous afternoon on the 
cricket- or ball-grounds, were no more to 
him than the pavements and houses of a 
city street. On this particular night, a sex- 
ton was digging a grave by the light of his 
lantern, and, tossing up a skull from the pit 
in which he stood, hit Cowper on the knee. 

''This little accident was an alarm to my 
conscience ; for that event may be num- 
bered among the best religious documents 
which 1 received at Westminster." 

We are distinctly sorry for the shock, 
and the recollection ; are jealous, to the 
point of greed, for every glint of sunshine 



20 William Cowper 

that could be his very own before the com- 
ing of the days of darkness that were to be 
many. With the same feeling we read of 
his fondness for Vincent Bourne, the usher 
in the fifth form to whom he owed the 
love for Latin verse which yielded him oc- 
cupation and solace while he lived. 

" I love the memory of Vinny Bourne. I think him 
a better poet than Tibullus, Propertius, Ausonius, or any 
of the writers in his way, except Ovid, and not at all 
inferior to him. I love him too with a love of partiality, 
because he was usher of the Fifth Form at Westminster 
when 1 passed through it." 

A bubble of boyish merriment breaks 
through the half-pensive reminiscence in 
the anecdote of the prank played upon the 
easy-going pedagogue by a titled pupil. 
The usher's wig was thick with pomatum 
and powder he was too lazy to comb out. 

"I well remember seeing the Duke of 
Richmond set fire to the greasy locks, and 
box his ears to put it out again." 

Pomatum, erudition, and horse-play were 
characteristic of the Westminster of the 
seventeen-forties. To the unexpected com- 
bination we are indebted for one of the few 
broad laughs we have in the review of a 
career so early and so darkly overcast. 



Brighter Days 2 1 

Cowper's zest in the narrative is significant 
of what we are not slow in discovering, 
i.e., that in those years at Westminster was 
brought to light, if not born, the sense of 
humour which blended so strangely with 
incurable melancholy in his subsequent life. 
He says in playful affectionateness of 
Bourne, that *'he made me as idle as him- 
self." Yet the "love of partialitv " he bore 
the usher, or love of learning for learning's 
sake, made him a good student in and out 
of school. " Vinny " gave him a bias for 
Greek and Latin classics. He read Homer 
with avidity and of his own volition, scrib- 
bled Latin verses for pleasure when he had 
finished those allotted as daily tasks, and 
won more than one prize for his work 
along these lines. All that we learn of his 
public-school life goes to prove genuine 
love of knowledge and study, amiability 
and a sort of affectionate facileness of dis- 
position inclining him to lean and be led, 
instead of striking out for himself and forg- 
ing ahead in paths of his own engineering, 
and withal, the peculiar isolation of his lot. 
Again and again in his autobiographical 
papers he returns to Westminster days 
and friendships as to a care-free asylum. 



22 William Cowper 

His intimates there were, perhaps without 
exception, more stalwart of mind and of 
will than himself. Many made their mark 
upon their generation, among them Warren 
Hastings. Lord Dartmouth, in whose Manor 
of Olney Cowper lived for so many years, 
sat next him on the sixth form, and his 
most intimate friend was Sir William Rus- 
sell, a lineal descendant of Oliver Cromwell. 
If any of ''the boys " were ever otherwise 
than kind to him, William forgot it in the 
affectionate review of the terms they had 
passed together before the plunge into the 
maelstrom which was to bear them in dif- 
ferent directions, and cast them upon widely 
dissimilar shores. 

Most of his fellows had definite aims and 
purposes. He had none. His father had 
thrust him out of the warmth and luxury 
of home into the misery of fagdom and the 
turbulence of a boys' school ; then boarded 
him out to be doctored as he might send an 
ailing horse to a veterinary stable. When 
cured, he was consigned, still as a chattel, 
to the uncertain mercies of democratic 
Westminster. In his acquiescence in the 
autocrat's will, the son was not merely 
obedient ; he was dutiful to a degree that 



Brighter Days 



23 



is amazing to us in considering his tempera- 
ment and needs. So, at the end of his 
academic course, when the same autocratic 
will designated the next step, William 
offered no resistance, active or passive. 
Grandfather Judge and Lord Chancellor 
uncle were arguments for grandson's and 
nephew's acceptance of the law as a pro- 
fession, the cogency of which satisfied the 
Reverend John, and was not gainsaid by 
the junior. 




CHAPTER III 

LAW-STUDIES — THEODORA — FATHER'S INFLU- 
ENCE AND DEATH 



WESTMINSTER dormitory, quadran- 
gle, and cricket-green were ex- 
changed for a corner in the stuffy office of a 
London attorney's office by day, with bed 
and board in the attorney's house, and the 
dutiful son began what was, at the best, a 
lounge through the several stations of the 
Bar-ward road. He studied law when he 
felt like doing so, and usually felt more like 
strolling, in the same light-hearted, pur- 
poseless fashion, around to the house of 
Ashley Cowper, his father's brother, who 
lived at No. 30 Southampton Row, but a 
block or two away. 

** Ashley Cowper," says a biographer, 
" was a very little man in a white hat lined 
with yellow, and his nephew used to say 
24 



Theodora 25 

that he would some day be picked by mis- 
take for a mushroom and popped into a 
basket." 

The oft-quoted witticism was among the 
saucy hits that made the small "mush- 
room's " daughters regard their cousin as 
uncommonly good company. Harriet (bet- 
ter known to us as Lady Hesketh) and 
Theodora Cowper were what we would 
class as '* thoroughly nice girls." London 
was full of temptations to an idle young 
man who had never earned a penny for 
himself, and was, therefore, ignorant of 
the value of money and time. Extrava- 
gance, gaming, and profligacy were the 
hall-marks of men of fashion who had 
wealth enough to keep their heads above 
the waters of bankruptcy and their bodies 
out of the debtors' prison, and the man of 
fashion, being what he was, had a host 
of imitators without wealth and without 
wit. The drawing-room of No. 30 South- 
ampton Row, where Ashley Cowper's 
brace of pretty and vivacious daughters 
" made giggle " over silly next-to-nothings, 
was a clean, safe haunt for the lad of 
eighteen. His pure mother — dead these 
dozen years — could not have chosen more 



26 William Cowper 

virtuous associates for him, or more inno- 
cent recreation for his unemployed even- 
ings and many lazy afternoons. 

Unless, indeed, she had held the same 
views with Ashley Cowper upon the dan- 
gerous inexpediency of marriages between 
cousins german. It was inevitable that the 
affectionate, indolent boy should make love 
to one or the other of his charming kins- 
women. His choice lighted — capriciously 
or from some occult principle of natural 
selection — upon the younger of the sisters, 
Theodora. The affair may have begun in 
giggle, and been fostered by propinquity, 
but the result showed the attachment to be 
no boy-and-girl fancy. The pair had taken 
it seriously and fairly tested the stuff of 
which it was made by the time William 
Cowper attained his nominal majority, and 
the very little man in the white hat lined 
with yellow rubbed his eyes open to the 
fact that something more than fun-making 
was going on in the heart of his home. 

The father is proverbially slow of sight 
and of wit with regard to his daughters' 
love-matters. The awakening to the prob- 
ability of courtship and marriage for them, 
the certainty that they will prefer other men 



Theodora 27 

to himself, some day, — if the exhibition of 
bad taste be not already an accomplished 
and mortifying fact, — is always a disagree- 
able surprise. Theodora's father was no 
more astute than other parents of his sex in 
foreseeing what was bound to happen ; he 
was prompt and resolute in action when he 
did awaken. His nephew William was 
well enough in his place, having commend- 
able parts of a certain sort. He could 
scribble tolerable verse in English, an ac- 
complishment which the uncle liked to 
believe and declare came from the Cowper 
side of the family. Ashley turned out 
poems that were not bad, and his clerical 
brother John had a neat knack in the same 
direction. William's Latin and Greek verses 
were said to be clever ; he had a pretty wit 
in conversation, and his manners were not 
unbecoming the descendant of a King, a 
distinguished Jurist, and a Doctor of Divin- 
ity. Being now one-and-twenty years of 
age, he would soon be called to the Bar, 
and thus be placed in the direct line of legal 
promotion, his antecedents being propitious 
to such advancement. He would have a 
genteel patrimony at the death of his father, 
with but one brother — John, now in Cam- 



28 William Cowper 

bridge University — to divide it with him. 
That foolish baby, Theodora, was fond of 
her good-looking cousin and he of her. 

*'If you marry William Cowper, what 
will you do for a living ? " he had asked his 
daughter, testily. 

She laughed in his frowning face. 

*' Do, sir.? Why, wash all day, and ride 
out on the great dog at night ! " 

The paternal protest was not to be turned 
aside by a jest. Over against the pros of 
the case in hand were the cons of the suit- 
or's disinclination to take his profession — 
or anything except love-making — seriously; 
the absolute certainty, to his uncle's appre- 
hension, that he would saunter, dreamily 
and smilingly, through life as he was accus- 
tomed to lounge into the girls' sitting-room 
at all hours of the day, when he and they 
should be busied elsewhere. He was a 
decent enough lad, but ''Ne'er do weel" 
was written all over him, and he was Theo- 
dora's first cousin, — but one remove from 
fraternal relationship. Marriage between 
them was not to be thought of. 

Filial piety must have been a family 
characteristic in the Cowper connection. If 
the lovers rebelled in word and in verse 



Theodora 29 

at the father's decree, there was no open 
revolt. 

''They sensibly bowed to fate, and agreed 
to separate," says Mr. Thomas Knight, 
Cowper's latest biographer. Among the 
love-poems treasured by Theodora while 
she lived, was one describing their parting : 

" Yet, ere we looked our last farewell, 
From her dear lips this comfort fell ; — 
' Fear not that Time, where'er we rove, 
Or absence, shall abate my love.' " 

That Time was to prove how the girl 
kept her promise. The evils of such mar- 
riages as the young creatures had proposed 
are better understood now than then ; yet 
it may be questioned if William Cowper 
could have done a wiser thing for himself 
than by eloping with his cousin, and after- 
ward, under her loving encouragement, 
"buckling down" to the business of a 
hard-working attorney, with prospects 
founded upon family influence. 

His verses to "Delia" are but echoes of 
the moans wrung from him under the cruel 
disappointment. While he lived and was 
rational, there was in his heart a corner 
consecrated to the memory of this first and 



30 William Cowper 

blameless love. We respect it and him the 
more because he did not pose as love-lorn, 
or the victim of paternal tyranny. 

It was, undoubtedly, in the hope of for- 
getting sorrow in active and congenial oc- 
cupation that, soon after he was admitted 
to the Bar, and had taken up his abode in 
the Temple, he joined himself to six other 
graduates of Westminster in a literary soci- 
ety under the name of the Nonsense Club. 
If the organisation existed in our day, the 
members would call themselves ''literati," 
and be sneered at by graver workers in 
the realm of letters as ''dilettanti." They 
thought much of themselves and of each 
other, and of what they did, while the 
society lived. Their very names are strange 
to nine out of ten fairly well-read people of 
the present century, although two of them, 
Churchill and Colman, owned the 5/. James 
Chronicle and were prolific writers of 
verse, dramas, reviews, and translations 
from the Latin and Greek classics. Wil- 
liam Cowper was a contributor to the St. 
James Chronicle and other periodicals, try- 
ing his 'prentice hand upon essays, poems 
"after" his beloved classical masters, and 
an occasional English ballad. " I have been 



Father's Influence 31 

a dabbler in rhyme ever since I was four- 
teen years old," he says of himself. His 
trial-effort was a translation of an elegy by 
Tibullus. 

The specimens of his early work that 
have been preserved are neat, some affected, 
and never original in thought or treatment. 
Among his contributions XoThe Connoisseur 
was one upon The Art of Keeping a Secret, 
which had the not unusual effect of con- 
vincing the author of the strength of his 
own arguments. 

"1 once wrote a Connoisseur upon the 
subject of secret-keeping," he told William 
Unwin in 1780, "and from that day to 
this 1 believe 1 have never divulged one." 

Up to the twenty-fifth year of a, thus far, 
profitless life, he had not falsified his uncle's 
prognostications of his career. Always 
singularly devoid of natural ambition, such 
aspirations as were excited by his fellows 
of the Nonsense Club soared no higher 
than the columns of the reviews I have 
mentioned. 

When the Reverend John Cowper, D.D., 
died in 1756, leaving his second wife a 
widow, William had done little or nothing 
to justify his father's selection of a profes- 



32 William Cowper 

sion for him. If the parent were chagrined, 
he died and made no sign. As nearly as 
we can judge, he was of a dogmatic, yet 
philosophical, turn of mind, and did not 
weep over the irretrievable. He had used 
his own judgment in placing his sons where 
they might, and ought to, do well if they 
would. Neither of them ever accused him 
of neglect or unkindness. On the contrary, 
William speaks of him, incidentally, as 
"most indulgent." Southey reasons that, 
"if he had not loved his father dearly and 
found that home a happy one, he would 
not have * preferred it to a palace.' " 

The unimaginative reader is, nevertheless, 
struck by the fact that the only lament left 
on record by the son of his parting from 
Great Birkhampstead Rectory "forever," is 
in a "long adieu to fields and woods from 
which I thought I should never be parted." 

If he never pretended to miss his father 
sensibly, or to mourn for him long or deeply, 
it was because he was innately sincere, and, 
as I have said, no poseur. Still, in our quest 
for causes obvious and recondite which 
coloured and shaped William Cowper's 
character, we cannot escape the conclusion 
that the father's influence, however indi- 



Father's Influence 3} 

rect, was strong in results. It was not 
what he did, but what he left undone and 
unsaid, that wrought upon the plastic na- 
ture. He ignored the most sacred obliga- 
tions of fatherhood after the mother's death 
redoubled these. He did not interpose, as 
he, alone, had the right to do, to save the 
motherless baby from downright barbarity 
in the two years following his great loss; 
he gave the lad his head in Westminster 
and in London, and, if he ever acted as the 
spiritual guide of the young soul, we have 
no intimation of the truth. The one indi- 
cation of a disposition to direct his son's 
mind to an existence beyond the grave, 
given by William's pen, is unpleasing to 
repulsiveness : 

"When I was about eleven years of age my father 
desired me to read a vindication of self-murder and give 
him my sentiments upon the question. I did so, and 
argued against it. My father heard my reasons and was 
silent, neither approving nor disapproving ; from whence 
1 inferred that he sided with the author against me, 
'though, all the time, I believe the true motive of his 
conduct was that he wanted, if he could, to think 
favourably of the state of a departed fiiend who had, 
some years before, destroyed himself " 

The more probable explanation of the 



34 William Cowper 

divine's singular behaviour in first putting 
the pamphlet into the hands of a morbid, 
introspective lad, and then, by silence, en- 
dorsing the fiendish contention of the writer, 
is that he was, all the while, thinking of 
something else. Absence of mind from all 
that bore upon the material or spiritual wel- 
fare of his offspring would seem to have 
been habitual with the professional phy- 
sician of souls. The solution of the enigma 
is not complimentary to him as parent, 
clergyman, or human being. It is prefera- 
ble to the hypothesis that suggested itself 
to the lad then, and returned to him with 
cumulative force in the hour of supreme 
temptation. 




COWPER COAT-OF-ARMS. 



CHAPTER IV 

** PUSH-PIN " — HEREDITARY GLOOMS — DR. 
JOHN DONNE 

UNTIL William Cowper was a man of 
one-and-thirty, his desultory, shift- 
less mode of living had not weighed un- 
comfortably upon his thoughts. Much less 
had it offended a conscience that became, 
afterward, unnaturally and hurtfully sensi- 
tive. He could hardly have been called 
idle, for his pen was continually employed 
upon one theme and another. His brother's 
tastes were cognate to his, and the two col- 
laborated in a translation of the Henriade 
into a popular version. Together they pro- 
duced eight books of heroic couplets, each 
writing four. John got twenty guineas for 
his work, William waiving his claim to the 
meagre compensation. A more delightful 
task was the loving reperusal of the Iliad 

35 



36 William Cowper 

and the Odyssey, and a critical comparison of 
the noble originals with Pope's translation. 

*' There is hardly the thing in the world of which 
Pope was so entirely destitute as a taste for Homer," he 
says caustically. " When we looked for the simplicity 
and majesty of Homer in his English representation, we 
found puerile conceits instead, extravagant metaphors, 
and the tinsel of modern embellishment in every possible 
position." 

Of this apparently dead level, separating 
his entrance upon the nominal duties of his 
profession from the tragedy that put an 
end to these, he wrote, a quarter-century 
thereafter : 

"Everything that we do is in reality im- 
portant, 'though half that we do seems to 
be push-pin." 

He had been playing push-pin for a third 
of his years, not after the fashion of the 
conventional young man of fashion, nor 
with the heavy indolence of a drone in the 
human hive. He indulged in no expensive 
fancies, and had no relish for coarse dissi- 
pation ; he was essentially refined and his 
impulses were not wanting in nobility. His 
life was simply objectless. He wrought 
upon his manuscripts when the humour 
seized him, and if, as did not always hap- 



Hereditary Glooms 37 

pen, they were finished and to his liking, 
he either threw them into his desk and for- 
got them, or into the hopper of the public 
prints, and never bethought himself of their 
after-history. That he was not habitually 
melancholy, or even a sufferer from fre- 
quent fits of depression, his private letters 
and anecdotes connected with this epoch 
prove to all except those who are deter- 
mined to make him out a mental and spirit- 
ual hypochondriac from the nursery. 

Each of his biographers has his own — and 
to himself satisfactory — explanation of the 
insanity that overtook him in his thirty-sec- 
ond year. The fretting pain, never allayed, 
of disappointed love, foiled literary ambi- 
tions, and — more persistently than these — 
religious fanaticism, are the theories most 
affected by professional limners and their 
readers. 

The first of these is easily disposed of. 
There is no doubt of Cowper's genuine 
attachment for the lovely cousin he had 
wished to marry, and that her father's in- 
flexible refusal of his consent to the union 
broke off the intimacy between them, per- 
haps all association even as friends after 
they were convinced that Ashley Cowper's 



38 William Cowper 

"determination was unalterable." That 
the young suitor suffered intensely is as 
certain. His lines on this subject to the 
confidante of both, and his lifelong friend, 
Lady Hesketh, formerly Harriet Cowper, 
are nearly as well known as his apostrophe 
to his mother's picture. It does not, how- 
ever, escape the notice of the cool-headed 
critic that he couples, in his lament over his 
ruined hopes, the death of his dear friend 
and schoolmate Sir William Russell with 
the loss of his Theodora : 

" Deprived of every joy I valued most, 
My friend torn from me and my mistress lost, 

Still, still I mourn with each returning day, 
Him, snatched by fate in early youth away, 
And her, through tedious years of doubt and pain, 
Fixed in her choice, and faithful, but in vain. 

See me, ere yet my distant course half-done, 
Cast forth, a wanderer, on a wild unknown. 
See me, neglected on the world's rude coast, 
Each dear companion of my voyage lost." 

The threnody wins us to sympathy with 
the poet's pain, but does not bear out the 
hypothesis of an all-absorbing, overmaster- 
ing love for one woman. We detect but a 



Hereditary Glooms 39 

faint sparkle of the old glow in the ashes 
of years when he writes to her sister in 
their middle age : 

"I still look back to the memory of your 
sister and regret her. But — how strange it 
is ! if we were to meet now, we should 
not know each other." 

In a lighter mood that shows how sparkle 
had gone out and ashes had cooled, he says 
in another letter to his former confidante : 

" So much as I love you, my dear cousin, 1 wonder 
how the deuce it has happened I was never in love with 
you. Thank Heaven that I never was ! for, at this 
time I have had a pleasure in writing to you, which in 
that case I should have forfeited. Let me hear from 
you, or I shall reap but half the reward that is due to 
my noble indifference." 

The gallant badinage is of an age when 
letter-writing was a fine art, and from the 
hand of an adept in it. " He jests at scars 
who never felt a wound," or to whom one 
scar means no more than another. 

The final separation from Theodora, after 
which neither ever saw the other, was not 
two years old when he could expatiate to a 
correspondent upon the charms of a ''lovely 
and beloved" sixteen-year-old girl, *'of 
whom 1 have often talked to you." 



40 William Cowper 

"When she speaks, you might believe 
that a Muse is speaking. Woe is me that 
so bright a star looks to another region. 
Having risen in the West Indies, thither it 
is about to return, and will leave me no- 
thing but sighs and tears." 

Theodora's lover was no more fickle than 
most of his age and sex ; neither was he 
phenomenally constant. 

Enough has been said of his dilettanteism 
and unfeigned indifference to literary fame 
to render discussion of the second diagnosis 
superfluous. The poet's friends were even 
more solicitous than he to conserve a repu- 
tation he would never have bestirred him- 
self to gain but for their incitement. As 
we shall see, his best works were suggested 
to, and urged upon him by them. 

The assertion that much dwelling upon 
religious subjects, especially upon the as- 
pects of these presented by the fast-rising 
Evangelical party of that decade, wrought 
upon a lively imagination to the overthrow 
of judgment and the undoing of reason 
itself, is scarcely more tenable. William 
Cowper had been duly prepared for con- 
firmation at Westminster School by the 
master, Dr. Nicholls. He makes grateful 



Hereditary Glooms 41 

note of "the pains which Dr. Nicholls took 
to prepare us for confirmation." 

" The old man acquitted himself of this duty like one 
who had a deep sense of its importance, and I believe 
most of us were struck by his manner, and affected by 
his exhortations. Then, for the first time, 1 attempted 
to pray in secret ; but, being but little accustomed to 
that exercise of the heart, and having very childish no- 
tions of religion, I found it a difficult and painful task, 
and was, even then, frightened at my own insensibility. 
This difficulty, 'though it did not subdue my good pur- 
poses 'till the ceremony of confirmation was passed, soon 
after entirely conquered them. 1 lapsed into a total for- 
getfulness of God, with all the disadvantages of being 
the more hardened, for being softened to no purpose." 

According to his own testimony, he had 
been, thereafter, as little troubled by re- 
ligious speculations as by the conviction of 
his own sinfulness. His intellectual belief 
in the evidences of Christianity was never 
shaken and was sometimes blatant. He 
reports a controversy with a deist, when, 
Cowper says, he was, himself, "half-in- 
toxicated," and "vindicated the truth of 
Scripture, in the very act of rebellion against 
its dictates." The action of his opponent, 
who " cut short the matter by alleging that, 
if what 1 said was true I was certainly 
damned by my own choosing" passed 



42 William Cowper 

with a laugh like many another irreverent 
bon mot. 

The singular omission of a hereditary bias 
to insanity in the recapitulation, by thought- 
ful writers, of the possible and probable ori- 
gin of the horrible malady which was to 
becloud the rest of his days, can be accounted 
for only on the score of the comparative neg- 
lect of prenatal influences on the part of the 
scientific men of the eighteenth century. 
An eminent modern writer upon psycho- 
logical phenomena avers, as his deliberate 
conviction, that not one man in a thousand 
is utterly free from monomania, while two- 
thirds of our daily associates are insane 
upon one or more subjects; a state of things 
referable, he says, to the fact that mental 
and moral diseases are more surely passed 
down from parents to children than physi- 
cal infirmities. 

Upon the second page of this book men- 
tion is made of an ancestor of Anne Donne 
and her sons, who played a prominent part 
in the English Church and among English 
men of letters, a century before William 
Cowper was born. A contemporary poet 
thus eulogises the great Dr. John Donne, 
Dean of St. Paul's: 



Dr. John Donne 43 

" Whatsoever wrong 
By ours was done the Greek or Latin tongue 
Thou hast redeemed, and opened us a mine 
Of rich and pregnant fancy, drawn a line 
Of masculine expression, which had good 
Old Orpheus seen, or all the ancient brood 
Our superstitious fools admire, and hold 
Their lead more precious than thy burnished gold, 
Thou hadst been their exchequer. 
Here lies a King that ruled as he thought fit 
The universal monarchy of wit ; 
Here lies two Flamens, and both these the best, — 
Apollo's first, at last the True God's Priest." 

From this one of his distinguished for- 
bears, William Cowper may well have 
drawn the love for "Greek and Latin 
tongue " that marked him from early boy- 
hood; the "rich and pregnant fancy" that 
earned him lasting fame; the patient, loving 
care, the polishing and repolishing, line by 
line and stanza by stanza, characteristic of 
his literary methods, and furnishing the 
"burnished gold" of composition to his 
world of admiring readers. What else en- 
tered into his inheritance ? 

1 have held in my hands a copy of the 
rare book to which Edmund Gosse devotes 
eight or nine pages in his fascinating group 
of essays entitled Gossip in a Library. 
The caption is: 



44 William Cowper 

Death's Duel ; or a Consolation to the Soiile against 
the dying Life and living Death of the Body Deliv- 
ered in a sermon at White Hall before the King's 
Majesty, in the beginning of Lent, i6jo. By that late 
learned and reverend Divine John Donne ^ Dr. in Di- 
vinity & Deane of St. Paul's, London. Being his last 
Sermon^ and called by his Majesty's household, " The 
Doctor^s owne Funeral Sermon." 

Gosse calls this discourse, *'one of the 
most creepy fragments of theological lit- 
erature it would be easy to find." The 
dying poet shrinks from no physical horror 
and no ghostly terror of the great crisis 
which he was, himself, to be the first to 
pass through. 

*' That which we call life," he says, "is but Hebdomada 
mortium, a week of death, seven days, seven periods 
of our life spent in dying, a dying seven times over, and 
there is an end. Our birth dies in infancy, and our in- 
fancy dies in youth, and youth and rest die in age, and 
age also dies, and determines all." 

While preparing his sermon, feeling the 
inroads of a mortal disease within his body, 
he ordered a burial-urn, 

"just large enough to hold his feet, and a board as long 
as his body, to be produced. When these articles were 
ready they were brought into his study, and the old 
man stripped oft his clothes, wrapped himself in a wind- 




JOHN DONNE 
(FROM OLD PRINT IN THE POSSESSION OF BEVERLY CHEW, ESQ., OF NEW YORK 



I 



Dr. John Donne 4s 

ing-sheet and stood upright in the little wooden urn, 
supported by leaning against the board. His limbs 
were arranged like those of dead persons, and when his 
eyes had been closed, a painter was introduced into the 
room, and desired to make a full-length and full-sized 
picture of this terrific object — this solemn, theatrical 
presentment of life in death. . . . All this fortnight, 
and to the moment of his death, the terrible portrait 
of himself in his winding-sheet stood near his bedside, 
where it could be the hourly object of his attention. 

** So one of the greatest churchmen and one of the 
greatest, if most eccentric, of its lyrical poets passed 
away in the very pomp of death, on the 31st of March 
1631."* 

If one tithe of our specialist's sweeping 
condemnation of his fellow-creatures be 
true, and like begets like from generation 
unto generation, John Donne's freakish fan- 
cies may have been seed, buried long out 
of sight and ken of men, but quick at heart 
with evil life, and destined finally to spring 
up in his ill-starred descendant. What 
Donne's contemporaries catalogued as ec- 
centricities budded and blossomed into 
madness under the unfortunate conditions 
of Cowper's early years. Had he, or his 
relatives, or medical advisers had a glim- 
mering appreciation of the lurking taint in 
his blood and brain, they would have recog- 

* Gossip in a Library. 



46 William Cowper 

nised what should have put them on their 
guard before the open outbreak of lunacy. 

Cowper was still a law-student when he 
wrote to one of the Westminster ** seven " 
of assailants 

" That with a black, infernal train 
Make cruel inroads in my brain, 
And daily threaten to drive thence 
My little garrison of sense. 
The fierce banditti which I mean 
Are gloomy thoughts, led on by spleen." 

The fell train had a definite anxiety as 
leader in 1763. His slender means were 
so nearly exhausted and his prospects of 
money-making so unpropitious that, for 
the first time in his experience, he was 
alarmed as to his future. Casting about in 
his mind for some way of driving the wolf 
from his respectable door, he asked a friend 
if, in the event of the death of the Clerk of 
the Journals of the House of Lords, his 
(Cowper's) relative, Major Cowper, who 
had influence in that quarter, might not be 
prevailed upon to give him the post. It is 
likely that neither of the young men would 
have recollected the conversation, had not 
the official in question died suddenly soon 



Hereditary Glooms 47 

afterwards. Two other offices, yet more 
lucrative, became vacant about the same 
time, and Major Cowper astonished and 
** dazzled " his kinsman by the sudden 
offer of ''the two most profitable places, 
intending the other for his friend, Mr. 
Arnold." 

Cowper's brain needed but a touch, at 
this juncture, to destroy its balance. The 
reaction from the dread of poverty to the 
certainty of what seemed to him affluence, 
was a push and a violent one. To his pa- 
tron's surprise, after accepting the "splen- 
did proposal," he asked time to deliberate 
upon it, and 

" for the space of a week was harassed day and night, 
perplexed by the apparent folly of casting away the only 
visible chance of being well provided for and retaining 
it. First he gave up the two places offered to him, 
and flattered himself that the clerkship of the journals 
would fall fairly and easily within the scope of his abil- 
ities. Next, he was seized with nervous horrors at 
thought of the preliminary examination at the bar of the 
House ; then racked by misgivings as to his ability to 
perform the duties of the office, and, when these barriers 
were passed, conceived a terror of the inferior clerks, 
who, he imagined, were inimical to him. 

" The feelings of a man when he arrives at the place 
of execution are probably much like mine every time I 



48 William Cowper 

set my foot in the office, which was every day for more 
than half-a-year together." 

The likelihood that the ** powerful party 
formed among the Lords " against him, and 
the sulkiness of the sub-ofFicials to the 
newly appointed head of the office, were a 
figment of Cowper's heated imagination is 
increased by the rally of senses and spirits 
at Margate, where he spent his vacation that 
year. In the rebound of spirit caused by 
the anticipation of the furlough, he wrote 
cheerily to Lady Hesketh : 

" . . . My days are spent in reading the Journals, 
and my nights in dreaming of them. An employment 
not very agreeable to a head that has long been habit- 
uated to the luxury of choosing its subject, and has been 
as little employed upon business as if it had grown upon 
the shoulders of a much wealthier gentleman. But the 
numskull pays for it now, and will not presently forget 
the discipline it has undergone lately. 

" If I succeed in this doubtful piece of promotion, 1 
shall have at least this satisfaction to reflect upon, — 
that the volumes I write will be treasured up with the 
utmost care for ages, and will last as long as the English 
constitution — a duration which ought to satisfy the 
vanity of any author who has a spark of love for his 
country." 

The pleasantry, forced or spontaneous, 
was his last for many a weary day. The 



Hereditary Glooms 49 

beneficial effect of Margate and congenial 
society was partial and temporary. In the 
autumn he was recalled to London and the 
employment he had found distasteful from 
the beginning of his attempt to fill the 
place. It was now so intolerable that he 
welcomed the approach of actual insanity 
that would release him from daily torment : 

" My chief fear was that my senses would not fail me 
time enough to excuse my appearance at the Bar of the 
House of Lords, which was the only purpose I wanted it 
to answer. Accordingly, the day of decision drew near, 
and I was still in my senses [!], though in my heart 1 had 
formed many wishes, and by word of mouth expressed 
many expectations to the contrary." 

This was sheer lunacy, and the art which 
hid the truth from the clerks with whom 
the shy, reserved stranger was not popular, 
and the friends who rejoiced in his apparent 
prosperity, was the cunning of a madman 
who did not know that he was bereft of 
reason, as of hope. 



CHAPTER V 

GLOOM DEEPENS INTO MANIA — ATTEMPTED 

SUICIDE — Theodora's constancy 



THE particulars of the means by which 
William Cowper, distraught and mis- 
erable, tried to accomplish what he rightly 
names ''the dark and hellish purpose of 
self-murder" are not pleasant reading. 

It is one of the problems of his times that, 
after the recovery of his reason, those who 
loved him best, and to whom he believed 
he owed, under God, his soul's salvation, 
should have encouraged him to put the tale 
upon paper with scrupulous circumstanti- 
ality of revolting particulars. The writing 
was enough, of itself, to invite a relapse. 

As was natural, memory, treacherous in 
other respects, reproduced with fatal fidel- 
ity the incident of the treatise upon suicide 
put into the child's hand by his father, and 
50 



Attempted Suicide s i 

the father's apparent acquiescence in the 
writer's views. **The circumstance now 
weighed mightily with me," he says. It 
was backed up by chance conversations 
with certain people whom he met at chop- 
houses and taverns. These agreed with 
the quiet, scholarly gentleman who adroitly 
led the talk into that channel, that "the 
only reason why some men were content 
to drag on their sorrows with them to the 
grave, and others were not, was that the 
latter were endued with a certain indignant 
fortitude of spirit, teaching them to despise 
life, which the former wanted." 

Moved by this " indignant fortitude," the 
doomed man bought a bottle of laudanum, 
and, the date of the much-dreaded "at- 
tendance at the bar of the House " being 
still a week off, carried it about with him, 
determined to use it at the eleventh hour, 
if no other way of escaping the ordeal pre- 
sented itself. A newspaper letter, which 
his diseased fancy construed into a covert 
attack upon himself, hastened the execu- 
tion of his design. 

Like one in a nightmare, he sought op- 
portunity of getting rid of his life and found 
none, — in the fields, where a temporary 



52 William Cowper 

change of purpose diverted his mind; in 
his chambers, subject to the continual in- 
trusion of the laundress and her husband; — 
until — still as in a troubled dream — he hit 
upon yet another expedient for bringing 
about the desired end. Throwing himself 
into a coach, he ordered the coachman to 
drive to the quay, ''intending never to re- 
turn." The water was low, and a porter 
or watchman eyed him suspiciously; he 
reentered the carriage, drove back to the 
Temple, shut himself up in his room, un- 
corked the bottle, and lifted it to his mouth. 
He believed, always, that the impression 
of an invisible hand "swaying the bottle 
downward as often as he set it against his 
lips," was a reality, and not a nervous de- 
lusion born of madness. After a score of 
futile attempts to swallow the laudanum, 
— the most determined of which was foiled 
by the discovery that the fingers of both 
hands were as closely contracted as if bound 
with a cord, and entirely useless, — he threw 
the poison away, "undetermined as to the 
manner of dying, but still bent upon self- 
murder as the only possible deliverance." 
On the night preceding the day "that was 
to place him at the bar of the House," he 



Attempted Suicide S3 

tried to stab himself with a penknife, " plac- 
ing it upright under his left breast, and lean- 
ing all his weight against it; but the point 
was broken off square and it would not 
penetrate." 

When the day dawned and he was still 
alive, he hanged himself upon the top of 
the door of his room, after several inef- 
fectual efforts to make the cord secure upon 
the framework of his bed. After hanging 
so long that consciousness quite forsook 
him, his life was saved by the breaking of 
the cord. **The bitterness of temporal 
death had passed " before the agony of re- 
turning physical life took hold upon him. 
Bruised and giddy, he crept back to bed, 
and early in the morning sent for Major 
Cowper, to whom he showed the broken 
noose and told the whole story. 

" His words were — ' My dear Mr. Cowper, you terrify 
me ! To be sure you cannot hold the office at this rate. 
Where is the deputation ? ' I gave him the key of the 
drawer where it was deposited ; and, his business re- 
quiring his immediate attendance, he took it away with 
him. 

" And thus ended all my connection with the Parlia- 
ment office." 

The action of the practical kinsman in 



54 William Cowper 

the instant removal of what William, and 
perhaps the Major himself, believed to be 
the exciting cause of the fit of frenzy, was 
the most sensible measure that could be 
devised. If the sufferer's horrible appre- 
hensions had had any basis in the facts of 
the case, and he really feared the Examina- 
tion — the grisly hobgoblin that had pursued 
him for weeks and months, — the certainty 
that it had vanished would have been his 
cure. As it was, another and more awful 
phantom took its place. 

" Before I arose from bed it was suggested to me that 
there was nothing wanted but murder to fill up the 
measure of my iniquities, and that, 'though 1 had failed 
in my design, yet 1 had all the guilt of that crime to 
answfer for. A sense of God's wratn, and a deep despair 
of escaping, instantly succeeded. The fear of death 
became much more prevalent in me than ever the 
desire had been." 

As asphyxia and the fall had brought on 
*' excessive pressure upon the brain" and 
other alarming symptoms, he summoned a 
physician, and also wrote to his brother 
John at Cambridge, confessing what he had 
done, but assuring him that he was now 
"desirous to live as long as it pleased the 
Almighty to spare him." 



Attempted Suicide 55 

Then, instead of following the physician's 
advice and going to the country, he shut 
himself up in his lonely chambers, haunted 
by the anguished fantasies of the last fort- 
night, and faced his sins '' now set in array 
against him." 

Candid inspection of one's naked soul, — 
the awful setting of one's secret sins in the 
light of God's countenance, — is enough to 
drive a healthy mind to despair. The story 
of what this sick and blinded soul endured 
is not — to use a pietistic technicality — " to 
edification," however different may have 
been the judgment of those who incited 
him to the revelation. The battle that en- 
sued was not a spiritual struggle, but the 
development of a mental malady. Arch- 
bishop Tillotson's sermons, turned over in 
piteous haste, and John Cowper's com- 
ments upon them ; a volume of Beaumont, 
picked up at random in a friend's apart- 
ment, and every other book he opened, 
contained "something that struck him to 
the heart." The laugh of a street-lounger, 
as the haunted man passed him ; the salu- 
tations of acquaintances ; a ballad, trolled 
on the corner by a wandering musician — 
had meaning, point, and insult for him. He 



56 William Cowper 

was terrified in dreams ; he reeled in walk- 
ing ; he shrank from the sight of his fellow- 
men, and had intolerable anguish in the 
thought that he could not escape the All-see- 
ing Eye. 

When John, full of tender sympathy, 
pierced to the heart with the sight of his 
brother's misery, tried to comfort him, he 
got but one answer : "O Brother ! I am 
damned ! Think of Eternity, and then think 
what it is to be Damned ! " 

Martin Madan, one of the new school of 
Evangelical believers and teachers, answered 
William's request that he would come to 
him. " If there was any balm in Gilead, 
he must administer it." The "enthusiast" 
sat down upon the bedside of his afflicted 
friend, and reasoned of original sin and the 
corruption of man's fallen nature, until 
Cowper listened with something like calm- 
ness to a doctrine that " set him on a level 
with the rest of mankind, and made his 
condition appear less desperate." Then 
the visitor began to pour into the fevered 
wounds the true balm of Gospel truth, 
insisting upon ''the efficacy of the blood of 
Jesus and His righteousness . . . lastly, the 
necessity of a lively faith in Jesus Christ. 



Attempted Suicide 57 

... It was the gift of God which the 
speakertrusted He would bestow upon me." 

"I wish He would!" groaned the 
tempest-tossed soul. "A very irreverent 
petition," he subjoins, in his narrative, 
"but a very sincere one." 

It may have appeared to Madan in the 
same light. For my part, I can think of 
nothing but the strong crying and tears 
with which the father of the epileptic boy 
sobbed — " Lord, I believe ! help Thou 
mine unbelief ! " and that the only All- 
wise Healer neither reasoned with nor 
preached to the convulsed lad. 

Let us bring to a swift close our painful 
abstract of the long-drawn-out agony of 
the recital. Madan's ministrations and 
John's brotherly attentions brought a few 
hours of comparative ease. The patient 
slept, and awoke in tenfold greater anguish 
of mind. About an hour after John arrived, 
next morning, excruciating pains in the 
head and "a strange and horrible darkness" 
fell upon the patient. He raved incessantly 
and wildly. 

" All that remained clear was the sense of sin and the 
expectation of punishment. . . . 

"My brother instantly perceived the change [!] and 



^8 William Cowper 

consulted with my friends on the best manner to dispose 
of me." 

Among those called into consultation 
upon the unhappy "case," as it was now 
decided to be, we note, with interest, the 
name and visit of Lady Hesketh, now the 
wife of a wealthy baronet. We cannot 
help regarding her as, in some sense, the 
representative of the sister whose silent 
constancy to the lover of her youth invests 
her with a halo of saintly steadfastness. 
As we shall see, in due time, there is evid- 
ence that Theodora Cowper never lost 
sight of her unfortunate cousin. He had 
written, " I shall always remember her with 
regret." While keeping herself out of his 
sight and refraining from all correspondence 
with him, never so much as sending him a 
line or a message in Lady Hesketh's many 
letters, not an incident in his career eluded 
her knowledge. In the one instance when 
she could serve him, her hand was put out, 
as from the veil of maidenly modesty she 
wore close about her, and supplied his 
needs. She has no place in the notable 
group of women whose names' and hist- 
ories are interwoven with Cowper's later 
life. We do not wear her picture in our 



Theodora's Constancy 59 

hearts as we treasure the gentle loveliness 
of the mother he thought of every day. 
No miniature of '' Delia " — 

" through tedious years of doubt and pain, 
Fixed in her choice, and faithful, but in vain," — 

was found among his effects when doubt 
and pain were passed as a tale that is told, 
if she had ever written to him, he had not 
kept her letters. The merest scrap of paper 
his pen had touched was a priceless relic to 
her; the verses — many of them no better 
than *'the doggerel of an idle hour" — he 
had copied out for her reading when they 
saw each other daily, and had thoughts, 
hopes, and plans in common, were rever- 
ently hoarded for over forty years, and 
never entrusted to another's keeping until 
he lapsed into total imbecility. Had she 
dreamed up to then of going over the 
faded lines once more with him. and, in the 
calm twilight of their lives, talking together, 
as dear friends and kinspeople, of the Past 
she had never forgotten ? When word of 
his condition reached the faded spinster of 
fifty-odd years, she committed the packet 
— sealed — of manuscripts and notes to a 
friend, with instructions that it was not to 



6o William Cowper 

be opened while she lived. The poems 
thus preserved were published in 1825, to- 
gether with personal recollections of the 
poet, collated by Lady Hesketh, in a thin 
volume now out of print. Theodora Cow- 
per outlived her cousin twenty-four years, 
dying, unmarried, in 1824. Her name and 
the lifelong romance of her tender, un- 
spoken fealty entitle her to an honourable 
place on the list of the world's martyr- 
heroines. 

Lady Hesketh was the last visitor of his 
own blood whom Cowper was permitted 
to see before the real nature of his "dis- 
temper " was recognised by doctors and 
friends. After his recovery, he recalls the 
circumstances of the trying interview to his 
cousin in several notes full of feeling, and 
touched by the peculiar grace that made all 
his letters models of the epistolary art. 

" You do not forget, I dare say, that you and Sir 
Thomas called upon me in my chambers, a very few 
days before I took leave of London. Then it was that 
I saw you last, and then it was that I said in my heart 
upon your going out at the door : ' Farewell ! there will 
be no more intercourse between us forever ! ' . . . 

" What could you think of my unaccountable behav- 
iour to you on that visit ? 1 neither spoke to you, nor 
looked at you. The solution of the mystery indeed fol- 



Gloom Deepens into Mania 6i 

lowed soon after ; hut at the time it must have heen in- 
explicable. The uproar within was even then begun, 
and my silence was only the sulkiness of a thunder- 
storm before it opens. 

" I am glad, however, that the only instance in which 
I knew not how to value your company was when I 
was not in my senses." 

And again — 

"Since the visit you were so kind as to pay me in 
the Temple (the only time I ever saw you without 
pleasure ! ) what have I not suffered ! . . . Oh, the 
fever of the brain ! " 

When quite convinced that a man was 
insane, physicians and philanthropists had 
ways and places for the management of 
him. Dr. Cotton of St. Albans was at the 
head of a madhouse there. That was 
what they called it. There was no smooth- 
ing over jagged realities with such euphem- 
isms as "Retreats," or even ** Asylums." 
He was a wise specialist in his line, and 
**of well-known humanity and sweetness 
of temper." 

Yet upon the heels of the attestation, 
Cowper concludes the harrowing narrative 
with a sentence that shudders in every 
word : 

*Mt will be proper to draw a veil over 
the secrets of my prison-house." 



CHAPTER VI 

LIFE IN DR. cotton's ASYLUM — RECOVERY 
AND CONVERSION 

THE publication of the last verses written 
by Cowper before he was placed 
under restraint strikes us as an offence to 
taste and an outrage to his memory. His 
friends might as well have preserved a bit 
of the cord with which he had tried to hang 
himself, and the bottle that had held the 
laudanum he was miraculously prevented 
from swallowing. 

The so-called " sapphics " are turgid with 
misery, and violent in the expression of it. 
Of literary merit they have little or none. 
After this shriek from the depths there is a 
dead silence for five months. 

Whatever may have been the dread se- 
crets of his prison-house, unkindness from 
Dr. Cotton and the attendants had no part 
62 



Dr. Cotton's Asylum 6^ 

in them, other than their conscientious em- 
ployment of the drastic remedies then used 
to subdue mania. He was brought very 
low in bodily strength, as he records after- 
wards without a suspicion that any but the 
most intelligent treatment had contributed 
to this end. 

Eight months went by and John Cowper 
— one of the fondest of brothers — had a 
report from the physician-in-chief, a shade 
more hopeful than those which had pre- 
ceded it. The patient had emerged so far 
from the black apathy of despair as to enter 
into conversation with Dr. Cotton ; had 
smiled at a funny story, and aroused him- 
self to furnish an anecdote in the same 
vein. 

" He observed the seeming alteration with pleasure," 
says Cowper's chronicle. " Believing, as well he might, 
that my smiles were sincere, he thought my recovery 
well-nigh complete ; but they were, in reality, like the 
green surface of a morass, pleasant to the eye, but a 
cover for nothing but rottenness and filth." 

It was, then, not surprising that the 
brother, hastening hopefully to St. Albans, 
should be bitterly disappointed at William's 
continued reserve and gloom. 

"As much better as despair can make 



64 William Cowper 

me," was the only reply he could obtain to 
his affectionate inquiries. The two were 
pacing the garden-walks in company, and 
the fresh air and sunshine may have 
wrought with John's urgent protestations 
that the "settled assurance of sudden judg- 
ment" crushing the other's soul, was "all 
a delusion." For the first time since his 
seizure, a gush of healthful tears came to 
the relief of the fevered brain. 

" If it be a delusion, then am I the happi- 
est of beings ! " exclaimed the poor sufferer, 
and wept himself calm. The first whisper 
of hope was breathed into the ear of his 
understanding at that moment. His clearer 
eyes and more cheerful speech were at 
once noted by the faithful servant who had 
tended him through his illness, and the joy- 
ful news spread in the staff of the asylum. 
The blessed change, the more hopeful be- 
cause gradual and with few fluctuations, 
progressed satisfactorily in the ensuing 
weeks. In one of the earliest letters written 
from St. Albans to Lady Hesketh, he credits 
John with the inception of the glorious 
work. 

" 'Though he only stayed one day with me, his com- 
pany served to put to flight a thousand deliriums and 



Dr. Cotton's Asylum 65 

delusions which I still laboured under, and the next 
morning I found myself a new creature." 

Such crises are a familiar feature to the 
specialist in mental and nervous disorders. 
Up to the day of John's visit, the healthful 
work had been like the growth of the 
young root underground. The brotherly 
sympathy and robust cheer were the sun- 
shine and warm air that made it break the 
soil and reach up into the light. 

Walking in the garden upon another day, 
he espied a Bible lying upon a seat, left in 
his way, doubtless, by wise Dr. Cotton. 
Opening it, the convalescent was moved 
almost to tears by the story of Lazarus, but 
without applying to his own case the lesson 
of Divine compassion it illustrated. Rising 
the next morning — still with a lighter spirit 
— before his breakfast was ready, he again 
picked up a Bible, left, as by accident, upon 
the window-bench, and fluttered the leaves 
casually. We give what followed in his 
own words : 

" The first verse I saw was the twenty-fifth of the 
third chapter of Romans : — 

"'IVIwin God hath set forth to be a propitiation 
through faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness 



66 William Cowper 

for the remission of sins that are past, through the 
forbearance of God. ^ 

"In a moment I believed and received the Gospel. 
Whatever my friend Madan had said to me, so long 
before, revived in its clearness, with ' demonstration of 
the Spirit and with power.' Unless the Almighty arm 
had been about me, I think I should have died with 
gratitude and joy. My eyes filled with tears, and my 
voice choked with transport. I could only look up to 
heaven in silent fear, overwhelmed with love and 
wonder." 

Dr. Cotton, himself a man of devout 
spirit and warm, living piety, was yet a 
wary physician, and too well versed in the 
deceitful phases of mania to be prematurely 
persuaded that this was indeed cure, and 
not a trick of fancy, or the natural rebound 
of animal spirits after long repression. 
Cowper's tribute to his judicious regimen 
is unequivocal : 

" 1 was not only treated by him with the greatest 
tenderness while 1 was ill, and attended with the utmost 
diligence, but when my reason was restored to me, and 
1 had so much need of a religious friend to converse with 
to whom I could open my mind without reserve, I could 
hardly have found a fitter person for the purpose. My 
eagerness and anxiety to settle my opinions upon that 
long-neglected point, made it necessary that, while my 
mind was yet weak and my spirits uncertain, 1 should 
have some assistance. . . . How many physicians 



Recovery and Conversion 67 

would have thought this an irregular appetite, and a 
symptom of remaining madness ! But, if it were so, 
my friend was as mad as myself ; and it was well for me 
that it was so." 

The letter to Lady Hesketh in which he 
thus pours out his happiness in his new- 
found joy was written in 1765, a month 
after his removal from St. Albans. With 
rare prudence and far-seeing sagacity, Dr. 
Cotton had impressed upon the patient's 
relatives the propriety of leaving him in his 
present quarters for ten months after the 
hopeful change. 

What Cowper aptly terms the *' storm 
of sixty-three " had swept away the last 
remnants of his slender patrimony. He 
returned to the world from which he had 
been secluded for nearly two years, as 
destitute as when he entered it, a wailing, 
naked infant, and, it may be added, hardly 
more fit to contend with it, in the fight for 
daily bread. In addition to the office that 
had been Pandora's gift by the hand of his 
well-meaning kinsman, Major Cowper, 
William had held for several years the 
virtual sinecure of the Commissioner of 
Bankrupts, at a salary of three hundred 
dollars a year. In the conviction that it 



68 William Cowper 

was dishonest to receive payment for work 
he could not do, he resigned the position 
and well-nigh beggared himself. Nothing, 
he affirmed, should tempt him to return to 
London, and his advisers acquiesced in the 
decision. 

What followed, while it seems foreign to 
our ideas of independence, and even of 
manliness, was germane to the spirit and 
customs of the day. Patronage of men of 
letters was a practice handed down from 
the times of Cicero and Miecenas. Litera- 
ture was a polite profession which nobody 
expected to "pay." They who plied the 
pen did not live by it, and there were sel- 
dom wanting men whom appreciation of 
genius and art inclined to contribute to the 
encouragement of these. Desultory as 
Cowper's literary labours had been, they had 
yet established his right to be enrolled in 
the guild of poets and essayists. It had 
been calamitously proved that he was not 
fit to practise law, or to occupy any office 
of public trust. If — as was exceedingly 
doubtful — he were ever again competent to 
engage in any sort of work, it must be 
something he could do at home, and in 
sedulous retirement. 



Recovery and Conversion 69 

*'My father," said a brilliant American 
writer, "left me money to buy bread with. 
Literature supplies the butter." 

The Cowper clan, including Sir Thomas 
and Lady Hesketh, and, it is surmised, at 
the earnest suggestion of the latter, pledged 
the family to furnish a yearly sum that 
should ensure a decent lodging and daily 
bread to their unfortunate connection during 
a lifetime that was likely, in their opinion, 
to be short. Not one of them, it is evident, 
was sanguine in the hope that science and 
religion had so effectually routed the un- 
clean spirit that there was no probability of 
his return to the swept and garnished house. 
In consideration of the different standards 
of literature as a self-supporting craft, set 
up at that era and in ours, we may reason- 
ably side with those biographers who 
commend "the sweet and becoming thank- 
fulness " with which William Cowper 
resigned himself to the position of perpetual 
pensioner upon the bounty of a younger 
brother; upon the uncle who had refused 
to give him his daughter in marriage, and 
sundry cousins, more or less beloved. He 
singles out one of these for honourable and 
grateful notice. 



70 William Cowper 

" The Major's behaviour to me after all he suffered in 
my abandoning his interest and my own in so miserable 
a manner, is a noble instance of generosity and true 
greatness of mind ; and indeed I know no man in whom 
these qualities are more conspicuous. ... I have 
great reason to be thankful I have lost none of my ac- 
quaintance but those whom 1 determined not to keep. 
1 am sorry this class is so numerous." 

The only '* butter-money," upon which 
the recluse had any right to depend, was 
the rent of the Temple chambers, taken 
upon a long lease by him, and now sublet. 

His brother engaged quiet lodgings for 
the convalescent in Huntingdon, and thither 
he removed on the twenty-second of June, 
1765, accompanied by the servant who had 
had charge of him at Dr. Cotton's, and from 
whom no persuasions on the part of those 
who questioned the economy of the meas- 
ure could induce Cowper to separate. 

" He is the very mirror of fidelity and affection to his 
master," he wrote from Huntingdon to his legal friend 
Joseph Hill. " And, whereas the Turkish Spy says he 
kept no servant, because he would not have an enemy 
in his house, I hired mine, because I would have a 
friend. Men do not usually bestow these encomiums on 
their lackeys, nor do they usually deserve them, but 1 
have had experience of mine, both in sickness and in 
health, and never saw his fellow." 



Recovery and Conversion 71 

In connection with the apparent extrava- 
gance of keeping this treasure — who, it 
must be owned, fully justified his master's 
praises, — 1 introduce an incident that belongs 
most fitly to this part of our story, although, 
chronologically, to a date a year later (1766). 
Cowper was then living with the Unwins, 
in the first real home he had had since his 
mother died. 

His peace of mind, " flowing like a river," 
was ruffled to the depths by a letter from 
Ashley Cowper. The little man had reason 
to believe that *'the family were not a little 
displeased at having learned that he kept a 
servant, and that he maintained a boy also, 
whom he had brought with him from St. 
Albans." The plain intimation was, Cow- 
per admits, couched in " the gentlest terms, 
and such as he was sure to use." Still, the 
intelligence was not pleasant, nor, we may 
suppose, would the nephew have selected 
this one of his patrons as the medium 
through which it would have to reach him. 
He replied, respectfully, but firmly, to the 
effect that his peculiar needs demanded the 
care of this man, and that, although his 
expenses at Huntingdon had outrun his 
means, he had good hopes of retrenching 



72 William Cowper 

them sensibly, now that he was no longer 
a housekeeper but a boarder. Finding 
him resolute in the intention of retaining 
his attendant, Ashley Cowper spoke more 
specifically, but *'as softly as he could." 

*' There was danger lest the offence taken 
by his relations should operate to the pre- 
judice of his income." 

At this juncture, John Cowper, ever ready 
alike in consolation and in action, stepped 
in, and went to the root of the matter. 
One of the aforesaid cousins — a colonel in 
the army, and a man of handsome means — 
** had been the mover of this storm." 

"Finding ine inflexible," William goes on to say to 
Lady Hesketh, "lie had convened the family on the 
occasion ; had recommended to them not to give to one 
who knew so little how to make a right use of their 
bounty, and declared, that for his own part he would 
not, and that he had accordingly withdrawn his con- 
tribution. My brother added, however, that my good 
friend, Sir Thomas, had stepped into his place, and 
made good the deficiency. . . . Being thus in- 
formed, — or, it seems now, misinformed, — you will not 
wonder, my dear, that I no longer regarded the Colonel 
as my friend, or that 1 have not inquired after him from 
that day to the present. But when, speaking of him, 
you express yourself thus, — ' lVho,you know, has been so 
constantly your friend,^ — I feel myself more than recon- 
ciled to him ; 1 feel a sincere affection for him, convinced 



Recovery and Conversion 73 

that he could not have acted toward me as my brother 
had heard, without your knowledge of it." 

The truth, as afterward transpired, was 
that the Colonel's threat was uttered in 
earnest, but hastily, in the irritation of the 
moment ; that, shamed, perhaps, by Sir 
Thomas Hesketh's generous promptness, or 
softened by sincere affection for his kins- 
man, he had retracted his purpose, and 
never returned to it. 

The circumstance is unimportant to us, 
and the family flurry would be hardly 
worth jotting down, were it not for the in- 
teresting sequel given in another letter from 
the beneficiary to Lady Hesketh : 

" I have a word or two more to say on the same sub- 
ject. While this troublesome matter was in agitation, 
and 1 expected little less than to be abandoned by the 
family, 1 received an anonymous letter, in a hand utterly 
strange to me, by the post. It was conceived in the 
kindest and most benevolent terms imaginable, exhort- 
ing me not to distress myself with fears lest the threat- 
ened event should take place ; for that, whatever de- 
duction of my income might happen, the defect should 
be supplied by a person who loved me tenderly, and ap- 
proved my conduct. 

" I wish 1 knew who dictated this letter. 1 have seen, 
not long since, a style most excessively like it." 



74 William Cowper 

SoLithey thinks he may have suspected 
his cousin Harriet to be his benefactress, 
adding — ''And from her — or her sister 
Theodora — no doubt it came." 

Goldwin Smith utters our conviction 
more strongly: "He can scarcely have 
failed to guess that it came from Theodora." 

Since Sir Thomas Hesketh had already 
openly pledged himself to make good all 
threatened deficiencies, it is extremely un- 
likely that the wife, with whom his rela- 
tions were most tender and confidential, 
would take this clandestine course to reas- 
sure her cousin of her support. Her silence 
on the subject is almost positive proof that 
she was in her sister's confidence, and 
Cowper's forbearance in not pushing in- 
quiries supports the conjecture. 

For his sake we are thankful that he was 
not forced to owe his daily living to the 
woman who loved him so entirely and 
truly and hopelessly, — and whom he had 
half forgotten. We account the act, so 
delicately, yet so bravely done, a credit to 
humanity and a glory to her sex. After the 
proffer of aid which was not accepted be- 
cause the need for it did not arise, the soli- 
tary woman shrinks back into the shade 



Recovery and Conversion y^ 

from which she had emerged for one mo- 
ment, and is not heard of again for ten 
years. When, at last, dreary twilight was 
settling upon the reason of her lover — once 
that, and always — and his own words were 
true in a sense he had not put into them in 
writing of her to her sister ; — " If we were 
to meet now, we should not know each 
other ! " — she resigned to other hands the 
keeping of the priceless souvenirs of a day 
forever dead. 




CHAPTER VII 

LIFE IN HUNTINGDON— THE UNWINS 

TO Cowper's residence in Huntingdon 
we owe the first of the many hymns 
that will endear him to Christian hearts in 
all ages. He had, it is true, written while 
yet at St. Albans a song of praise for his 
restoration to mental health, and the yet 
more blessed change that had come to his 
spiritual nature, but it is stiff and artificial 
beside the genuine poetry of the verses 
penned in the serene gratitude of a heart at 
peace with itself and in close communion 
with Him Who had turned darkness — and 
such darkness ! into light. This hymn 
marked a new epoch in his experience and 
in religious song: 

Far from the world, O Lord, I flee 
From strife and tumult far: 
76 



Life in Huntingdon 77 

From scenes where Satan wages still 
His most successful war. 

The calm retreat, the silent shade 

With prayer and praise agree, 
And seem, by Thy sweet bounty, made 

For those who follow Thee. 

There, if Thy Spirit touch the soul, 

And grace her mean abode. 
Oh, with what peace, and joy, and love 

She communes with her God. 

There, like the nightingale, she pours 

Her solitary lays; 
Nor asks a witness of her song 

Nor thirsts for human praise. 

Author and Guardian of my life, 

Sweet Source of light divine ! 
And — (all harmonious names in one) 

My Saviour ! Thou art mine. 

What thanks I owe Thee, and what love, 

A boundless, endless store, 
Shall echo througii the realms above, 

When time shall be no more. 



The lines are lovingly familiar to thou- 
sands of pious souls. As we read them, 
memory sets them to the dear old tunes 
crooned above our cradles, and sung with 
joyous fervour in the assemblies of the 
saints in many lands and tongues; — majes- 



78 William Cowper 

tic Ortonville; quaint old Mear, springing, 
lark-like, from one cadenza to another to 
the noble crescendo of the third line; or 
''Dundee's wild, warbling measures"; — 
sweet, tender and solemn reminiscences 
that are, of themselves, a gracious excuse 
for the repetition of the lyric here. 

Furthermore, — as Southey justly ob- 
serves, — "Because of the circumstances 
that gave rise to them, these poems belong 
properly to the personal history of the 
author." In harmony with the hymn, I 
quote from a letter to his kind relative. 
Major Cowper: 

" As to my own personal condition, I am much happier 
than the day is long, and sunshine and candle-light alike 
see me perfectly contented. 1 get books in aboundance, 
a deal of comfortable leisure, and enjoy better health, 1 
think, than for many years past. What is there want- 
ing to make me happy ? Nothing, if I can but be as 
thankful as I ought; and I trust that He who has be- 
stowed so many blessings upon me will give me grati- 
tude to crown them all." 

As the shortening days of autumn abridged 
the rides and walks that were indispensable 
to comfort and health, the loneliness of his 
retreat began to tell upon his spirits. The 
*' society of odd scrambling fellows like him- 



Life in Huntingdon 79 

self," who had diverted him upon first ac- 
quaintance, — "a North-country divine, 
very poor, but very good, and very happy," 
— a religious valetudinarian, who "drank 
nothing but water, and ate no flesh," and 
the one ''gentleman, well-read and sensi- 
ble," who had called upon him, — palled 
upon the intellectual palate. He felt the 
need of a real home, and affectionate, as 
well as intelligent, companionship. Mis- 
taking the natural sense of loss and longing 
for fiilling-off in his love for Christ and dis- 
relish for His service, he was on the verge 
of religious despondency, when the great- 
est blessing of his life was interposed to 
avert it. 

Walking, solitary and thoughtful, in an 
avenue of trees after morning service one 
Sunday, he was accosted by a young man 
of pleasing address and countenance, who 
introduced himself as William Unwin, and 
a fellow-worshipper in the church Cowper 
had just quitted. The family lived in the 
neighbourhood, and had been silent wit- 
nesses of Cowper's regular attendance upon 
religious services, his reverent behaviour 
during these, and his apparent loneliness. 
The father was an elderly clergyman, who 



So William Cowper 

eked out a slender income by preparing 
young men for the University of Cambridge. 
Cowper describes him as "a man of learn- 
ing and good sense, and as simple as Parson 
Adams." Of Mrs. Unwin, who was many 
years her husband's junior, he says : 

" His wife has a very uncommon understanding, has 
read much, to excellent purpose, and is more polite than 
a duchess. The son, who belongs to Cambridge, is a 
most amiable young man, and the daughter quite of a 
piece with the rest of the family." 

The appearance, in a dull country neigh- 
bourhood, of a bachelor, still under thirty- 
five, prepossessing in person and unsocial 
in habits, who set up a household of his 
own, and had a private valet, was a tooth- 
some morsel of Huntingdon gossip. The 
Unwins had used their eyes and wits dili- 
gently, and probably had gleaned some 
items relative to the solitary's antecedents 
that stirred their sympathies in his behalf. 
William Unwin had wished to call upon 
him, but his father opposed the friendly 
design upon the ground that the newcomer 
evidently preferred his own society to any 
other. Something in the pensive, even de- 
jected, air of the object of their kind so- 



The Unwins 8i 

licitude and of neighbourhood curiosity, 
impelled him on this Sunday noon to dis- 
regard parental counsel and enter into con- 
versation with the stranger. The talk turned, 
almost immediately, upon religious topics; 
Cowper learned that the young man was 
of his own inclination and sentiments, read- 
ing for orders, ''being and having always 
been, sincere in his belief and love of the 
Gospel." 

Young Unwin drank tea with his new 
friend that afternoon, and invited him cor- 
dially to visit at his father's house. This 
call introduced him to mother and daughter; 
he received and accepted an invitation to 
dinner, and a few days later ''met Mrs. 
Unwin in the street and went home with 
her." His account of the interview is 
graphic, and especially interesting as con- 
veying his earlier impressions of her whose 
influence was to be, thenceforward, greater 
than that of any other human creature in 
shaping and colouring his life. 

"She and I walked together, near two hours, and 
had a conversation which did me more good than I 
should have received from an audience of the first prince 
in Europe. That woman is a blessing to me, and I 
never see her without being the better for her company. 

6 



82 William Cowper 

I am treated in the family as if I were a near relation, 
and have been repeatedly invited to call upon them at all 
times. You know what a shy fellow 1 am. 1 cannot 
prevail with myself to make so much use of this privi- 
lege as I am sure they intend I should, but perhaps 
this awkwardness will wear off hereafter. 

" It was my earnest request, before I left St. Albans, 
that wherever it might please Providence to dispose of 
me, I might meet with such an acquaintance as I find in 
Mrs. Unwin. . . . 

" They see but little company, which suits me exactly. 
Go when I will, I find a house full of peace and cordial- 
ity in all its parts, and am sure to hear no scandal, but 
such discourse, instead of it, as we are all better for." 

In this frame of mind, he accounted as a 
timely suggestion of *'the good providence 
of God," the idea of taking the place in the 
Unwin household of a pupil-boarder who 
was leaving for the University. The state 
of Cowper's pecuniary affairs was embar- 
rassing, steadfast as was his faith that his 
bread and water would be sure, and that 
those who loved the Lord should not lack 
any good thing. He was still in debt to 
Dr. Cotton, and the stipend he had counted 
upon to defray the obligation was collected 
with difficulty from the tenant who had 
succeeded him in his chambers. He jests 
to Hill on "the impertinence of entering 



The Unwins 83 

upon a man's premises and using them 
without paying for 'em," and in putting 
the claim into his hands sighs, '' Poor toad ! 
1 leave him entirely to your mercy." 

If his readiness to accept a pension, his 
surprise when ''the Colonel " and Ashley 
Cowper demurred at his body-servant and 
riding-horse, and the airy lightness that 
postponed the discussion of money-matters 
to a more convenient season, remind us un- 
pleasantly of Harold Skimpole, it is yet 
manifest, in many ways, that he was an 
honest debtor and sincerely distressed at 
the idea of defrauding another, or cramping 
a creditor who had trusted him. As fast 
as money came to him, he paid it out to 
those to whom it was lawfully due, and, 
with rueful humour, records that after three 
months in his bachelor-hall, he had ** con- 
trived, by the help of good management 
and a clear notion of economical affairs, to 
spend the income of a twelve-month." 

Ever as ingenuous as a child in unburden- 
ing his mind to those he loved, he probably 
enlightened the Unwins fully as to his per- 
plexities and his revenues, and their know- 
ledge of these had something to do with 
the — to him — entirely satisfactory arrange- 



84 William Cowper 

ment entered upon between them. He re- 
fers the scheme and the successful execution 
of it to Divine guidance, and in this com- 
fortable persuasion he was nearer right than 
those who carp at ''leadings" and argue 
down "providential interpositions." 

"Whoso will observe the wonderful 
providences of God, shall have wonderful 
providences to observe" — spake a wiser 
than those who look no farther than to 
second causes, and the natural processes of 
sowing and reaping, for explanation of the 
sublimest, as of the pettiest, enigmas of life. 

Cowper writes in practical, sensible wise 
to Joseph Hill of the intended change: 

*' I find it impossible to proceed any longer in my 
present course without danger of bankruptcy. 1 have, 
therefore, entered into an agreement with the Rev. Mr. 
Unwin to lodge and board with him. The family are 
the most agreeable in the world. They live in a special 
good house, and in a very genteel way. They are all 
exactly what I could wish them to be, and 1 know 1 
shall be as happy with them as 1 shall be on this side of 
the sun. I did not dream of the matter till about five 
days ago ; but now the whole is settled. 1 shall transfer 
myself thither as soon as I have satisfied all demands 
upon me here." 

An extract from a letter of a much later 
date confirms what has been said of the 



The Unwins 85 

Unwins' appreciation of his financial condi- 
tion and his inaptness as a money-manager: 

*' I had not been ten months in the family 
when Mrs. Unwin generously offered me 
my place under her roof with all the same 
accommodation (and undertook to manage 
that matter with her husband,) at half the 
stipulated payment." 

Professor Goldwin Smith says, analyti- 
cally : 

*' The two great factors in Cowper's life 
were the malady that consigned him to 
poetic seclusion, and the conversion to 
Evangelicism, which gave him his inspira- 
tion and his theme." 

With due respect to this honoured au- 
thority, 1 venture to cite as a third and 
scarcely minor influence, his domestication 
with the Unwins. Every principal event 
in his history and many of (apparently) sec- 
ondary importance, show this man to have 
been of a singularly dependent nature, even 
womanish in the reaching out of mind and 
heart for some support that should protect 
and cherish, while upholding and directing. 
To borrow a nice, old-fashioned phrase, he 
needed mothering. His passionate grief for 
the mother whose image would have faded 



86 William Cowper 

from the recollection of most men under 
the heat and storms of fifty years, is but 
one proof of this ever-present, ever-clam- 
orous need, not always comprehended by 
himself. Strong men, like Churchill and 
Lloyd, his Westminster boon-comrades, 
Joseph Hill, John Cowper, most of all, 
John Newton, recognised and used it as 
they thought best for him, or for what they 
wished to accomplish through him. Good, 
true, devout women of the finest strain 
felt and appreciated more justly that which 
set him apart from the average Englishman, 
and gave him an especial claim upon the 
mother-sex. 

This, we assume, and most reasonably, 
is the keynote to an intimacy that has puz- 
zled alike the writers who would think no 
evil, and such as think only evil, and that 
continually, of close friendships between 
men and women. Cowper was outspoken 
in the frank fearlessness of his feeling for 
Mrs. Unwin while her husband lived, and 
afterwards. 

''Mrs. Unwin " — seven years older than 
he — "has almost a maternal affection for 
me, and 1 have something very like a filial 
one for her, and her son and 1 are brothers." 



The Unwins 87 

And again: "The lady in whose house 
he lived, was so excellent a person, and 
regarded him with a friendship so truly 
Christian, that he could almost fancy his 
own mother restored to life again, to com- 
pensate to him for all the friends he had 
lost, and all his connexions broken." 

The Unwins belonged to that wing of 
"the Evangelicals," then turning the reli- 
gious world upside down, that had re- 
mained within the fold of the Established 
Church, but held fellowship, in the unity of 
faith, with the more radical branch led by 
the Wesleys and Whitefield. In the con- 
servative party, Martin Madan, Cowper's 
early friend and kinsman, was prominent. 
His sister, of the same way of thinking, 
married her cousin, Colonel Cowper, who 
was also a first cousin of William and John 
Cowper. In the correspondence opened 
between William and herself, soon after 
his incorporation into the Unwin family, 
we have a picture of the home-life that had 
become his. 

"How do you pass your time.^" Mrs. 
Cowper had asked, curious, no doubt, as 
to the country ways of getting rid of the 
short days and long evenings filled up for 



88 William Cowper 

her in London by godly visitors, church- 
services, and charitable works. 

" As to amusements" — Cowper made haste to reply, 
— " I mean what the world calls such, we have none. 
The place indeed swarms with them, and cards and 
dancing are the professed business of almost all the 
' gentle ' inhabitants of Huntingdon. We refuse to take 
part in them, or to be accessories to this way of murder- 
ing our time, and by so doing have acquired the name 
of Methodists. 

" Having told you how we do not spend our time, 1 
will next say how we do. We breakfast, commonly, 
between eight and nine. Till eleven, we read either the 
Scriptures, or the sermons of some faithful preacher of 
those holy mysteries ; at eleven, we attend divine serv- 
ice, which is performed here twice every day, and from 
twelve to three we separate, and amuse ourselves as we 
please. During that interval, I either read in my own 
apartment, or walk, or ride, or work in the garden. We 
seldom sit an hour after dinner, but, if the weather per- 
mits, adjourn to the garden, where, with Mrs. Unwin 
and her son, I have generally the pleasure of religious 
conversation till tea-time. If it rains, or is too windy 
for walking, we either converse within-doois, or sing 
some hymn of Martin's " (Madan's) " Collection, and by 
the help of Mrs. Unwin's harpsichord, make up a tolera- 
ble concert, in which our hearts, I hope, are the best 
and most musical performers. After that we sally forth 
to walk in good earnest. Mrs. Unwin is a good walker, 
and we have generally travelled about four miles before 
we see home again. When the days are short, we 
make this excursion in the former part of the day, be- 



The Unwins 89 

tween church-time and dinner. At night we read, and 
converse, as before, 'till supper, and commonly finish 
the evening, either with hymns, or a sermon, and, last 
of all, the family are called to prayers. 

" 1 need not tell you that such a life as this is consist- 
ent with the utmost cheerfulness. Accordingly we are 
all happy and dwell together in unity as brethren. . . , 

" Blessed be the God of our salvation for such com- 
panions and for such a life, — above all for a heart to 
like it ! " 

To the practical, latter-day Christian, en- 
joined by conscience to be up and doing 
his little all for his generation, ever on the 
alert for opportunities to "make much of 
his dear Lord," by making the sum of 
human suffering less, and making the most 
of talents committed to him for improve- 
ment, and not for keeping only, — the sav- 
ing clauses in this programme are the three 
hours of study or writing, the work in the 
garden, and the walk, during which the 
trio may have come into touch with hum- 
bler neighbours, or, perchance, with the 
triflers who danced and gamed away the 
hours which the Evangelicals believed that 
they were improving. 

It softens the outline of the monastic 
routine to find Cowper intent upon garden- 
ing, and eager to collect seeds and cuttings. 



go 



William Cowper 



" I study the arts of pruning, sowing and planting," he 
writes to Mr. Hill, "and enterprise everything in that 
way from melons down to cabbages. I have a large 
garden to display my abilities in ; and were we nearer 
London, 1 might turn higgler, and serve your honour 
with cauliflowers and broccoli at the best hand." 

The founder of the Franciscan order culti- 
vated cabbages, and museums are radiant 
with missals and rich in carvings wrought 
by monastic brethren to fend off melan- 
cholia and hypochondria, in the intervals of 
masses and readings of religious homilies 
and the Lives of the Saints. 




CHAPTER VIII 

MR. UNWIN'S death — JOHN NEWTON — LIFE 
AT OLNEY 

THE name of the senior Unwin does not 
appear in Cowper's diary of occupa- 
tions and recreations. That worthy gentle- 
man, in his dual profession of clergyman and 
coach, had little leisure for *' the calm re- 
treat and silent shade " in which his boarder 
sat with great delight. While the lecture 
pieiise that succeeded breakfast proceeded, 
he was in his gig on the way to his Cam- 
bridge classes, or shut up in his study with 
a pupil. If his voice were not joined with 
the rest in " Madan's Collection," it was be- 
cause he was too weary to play any role but 
that of listener. On Sundays, he mounted 
his horse at an early hour, to be in season 
for morning service in his remote living of 
Grimstone in Norfolk. We are surprised, 
91 



92 William Cowper 

after Cowper's strictures upon the ''gen- 
tle" folks' frivolities, to read that Mrs. 
Unwin's influence had removed her hus- 
band from his parish to Huntingdon. "She 
had liked neither the situation nor the 
society of that sequestered place." One 
at least of his brother-clergymen was se- 
vere in criticism of his non-residence in 
his cure of souls, pronouncing it "incon- 
sistent with the piety of the Unwins to 
have encouraged such a dereliction." In 
yet harsher terms he interprets as "an evi- 
dent dispensation " an event which "awe- 
fully removed the stay of the family in the 
very act of inconsistency." 

On a Sunday morning early in July, 1767, 
when Cowper had been nearly two years 
with the Unwins, the old gentleman was 
thrown from his horse on his way to Grim- 
stone, and fractured his skull. He was 
found in the road by some passers-by, 
picked up and carried into the nearest house, 
a mean cottage, about a mile from Hunting- 
don. His family was summoned, but his 
condition put all thought of removal out of 
the question, and they remained with him 
for five days, agonised witnesses of his 
sufferings until these were ended by death. 



Mr. Unwin's Death 93 

Cowper never wasted words in writing to 
Hill, and he told this story in few and 
graphic phrases : 

" At nine o'clock on Sunday morning, he was in per- 
fect health, and as likely to live twenty years as either of 
us, and before ten was stretched, speechless and sense- 
less, upon a flock bed in a poor cottage where (it being 
impossible to remove him.) he died on Thursday evening. 
I heard his dying groans, the effect of great agony, for 
he was a strong man, and much convulsed in his last 
moments. The few short intervals of sense that were 
indulged him he spent in earnest prayer, and in expres- 
sions of a firm trust and confidence in the only Saviour. 

" Our society will not break up, but we shall settle 
in some other place; where, is, at present, uncertain." 

In September he authorised his legal 
friend to sell a hundred pounds' worth of 
certain stocks Hill had in keeping for him, 
stipulating that the sale should be kept 
secret from his family. "It would prob- 
ably alarm their fears upon my account, 
and possibly once more awaken their re- 
sentment." 

Two months later, he wrote of an after- 
thought characteristic of his tenderness of 
heart and conscience: 

" It seems to me, 'though it did not occur to me at 
first, that you may be drawn into circumstances disagree- 
able to your delicacy by being laid under the restraint of 



94 William Cowper 

secrecy with respect to the sale of this money. I desire, 
therefore, that if any questions are asked about the man- 
ner in which my arrears to you have been discharged, 
you will declare it at once." 

The monetary question was serious and 
pressing after the sudden removal of the 
"stay of the family." "The special good 
house " in Huntingdon must be given up, 
and the "genteel way" of living be ex- 
changed for a more modest. William 
Unwin was now in orders and was, shortly 
afterward, appointed to a living in Essex. 
Miss Unwin was engaged to be married to 
a Yorkshire clergyman. The "society," 
reduced to two, was homeless, and at a 
loss in what direction to migrate. 

At this date we meet, for the first time, in 
connection with William Co wper's, the name 
of a man who was, mentally and physically, 
and, it may be added, in moral force, so 
directly his opposite that the thought of the 
recognition on the part of either of the other 
as his counterpart is an anomaly in the his- 
toiy of celebrated friendships. 

"I shall still, by God's leave, continue 
with Mrs. Unwin, whose behaviour to me 
has always been that of a mother to a son," 
said Cowper to his cousinly London corre- 



John Newton 95 

spondent within a week after Mr. Unwin's 
death. 

" We know not yet where we shall settle, but we trust 
that the Lord Whom we seek will go before us, and 
prepare a rest for us. We have employed our friends, 
Haweis, Dr. Conyers of Helmsley in Yorkshire, and Mr. 
Newton of OIney, to look out a place for us, but at 
present are entirely ignorant under which of the three 
we shall settle or whether under either. 

" 1 have written to my Aunt Madan, to desire Martin 
to assist us with his inquiries. It is probable we shall 
stay here until Michaelmas." 

As will be seen by the words ''under 
which," all three of the men to whom the 
important change was referred were clergy- 
men, and the ministry of an Evangelical 
shepherd was the paramount consideration 
with Mrs. Unwin and her adopted son. 
The widow's personal relationship with 
Rev. John Newton began only a few days 
after her husband's violent taking-ofif. He 
was, however, well known to her by repu- 
tation, and interested in her son through 
their common friend, Dr. Conyers. 

The impression made by his call was 
so pleasant that before Newton left the 
house, the breaking-up of the family was 
discussed freely with him, and he had 
undertaken to look out a suitable abode for 



96 William Cowper 

them. Whatever report was rendered by 
Haweis and Conyers of their inquiries and 
the result of them, Newton's returns were 
speedy and emphatic. He had secured the 
very lodgings that they needed, and close 
to the Vicarage of Olney, occupied by him- 
self, the curate, in the non-residence of the 
vicar. A gate in the garden-wall made the 
grounds equally accessible to both families. 
Some repairs must be made upon the house 
selected for his new friends, and should 
these not be finished by Michaelmas, the 
Vicarage was open to them as a temporary 
home. 

Olney was, then, little better than a vil- 
lage, situated upon the sluggish Ouse, 
environed by flats, sodden and green after 
spring and autumn rains, and malarial under 
the summer suns. Besides their neighbours 
in the Vicarage, there were no people in 
the place above the rank of the shoemaker 
and the landlord of a public-house, both of 
whom applied for the tenement when 
Cowper and Mrs. Unwin vacated it, after 
many years of residence. Even then, Cow- 
per owned that it was **an incommodious 
nook," and the town "abominably dirty." 
Goldwin Smith says that the house was 



John Newton 97 

"dismal, prison-like, and tumble-dcfwn," 
and in the immediate vicinity of the worst 
part of the town. This last circumstance 
commended the situation especially to John 
Newton. That he was their nearest and 
only neighbour was, to the new tenants, 
and as long as he lived in OIney, an all- 
sufficient reason for preferring it to any 
other residence. 

John Newton's antecedents are too 
widely known to require recapitulation 
here. The most prodigious feats and for- 
tunes of a ** penny-dreadful " are tame by 
comparison with the unvarnished fiicts of 
his career. Infidel, blasphemer, constant 
lover, and lawless son; sailor and deserter; 
slave and slaver; the learner at his Dissent- 
ing mother's knees of Scripture verses and 
religious hymns; the student of Euclid and 
Latin in an African desert, the sands for a 
blackboard, a tattered Horace, and a copy 
of the Vulgate, his only text-books ; — 
finally, the humble convert of the Christ he 
had reviled — the tale, as told by himself, 
would fill twice the number of pages 
allotted to this volume. *'In the end," 
says a biographer, "he was ordained by 
the Bishop of Lincoln, and threw himself 



98 William Cowper 

with the energy of a new-born apostle 
upon the irreligion and brutality of Olney." 
Another, that " Mr. Newton had 

" ' A frame of adamant, a soul of fire.' " 

They had not invented the term "mus- 
cular Christianity " then, or he would have 
been the triumphant exponent of the school. 
The industries of the fenny district were 
lace-making and straw-work, even lads of 
eighteen plaiting straw for a living; the 
inhabitants were all ignorant, and all 
wretchedly poor. 

John Newton had entered upon his 
charge in Olney in 1764. When Cowper 
and his motherly guardian joined him, the 
religious machinery he had set up was in 
full swing, his zeal in the operation of the 
same unabated. He interfused the soul of 
his newly found friend with as much of a 
portion of his fiery zeal as it would hold, 
and set him to work out of hand. A worse 
novitiate for the undertaking could hardly 
be imagined than the peaceful, contemplat- 
ive existence of the two years Cowper had 
passed in Huntingdon. He had read much 
there, but done no intellectual labour. 
Meditation upon holy mysteries was a 



John Newton 99 

sedative, not a tonic ; constant intercourse 
witli the chosen few who, like himself, 
"had a heart for such a life" and were 
"consistently cheerful" throughout the 
length of its monotonous flow, had in- 
creased his native aversion to general so- 
ciety and fostered native delicacy of taste 
into fastidiousness. Mr. Newton had his 
opinions upon the semi-monastic habits of 
some of his brethren, and his opinions were 
resolute upon every subject. Mysticism 
was a synonym with him for indolence. 
He could not away with it. Where God 
had put a man, there was God's work for 
him to do, and plenty of it. He should be 
up and at it while the day lasted. 

"If two angels came down from heaven 
to execute a divine command, and one was 
appointed to conduct an empire, and the 
other to sweep a street in it, they would 
feel no inclination to exchange employ- 
ments," was one of his adages. In precept 
and in practice he taught that the duty of 
emperorandscavenger was action ! action ! 
action ! 

A man should undertake all that he 
could by any possibility accomplish, and do 
it with his might. 



100 William Cowper 

"A Christian should never plead spirit- 
uality for being a sloven. If he be but a 
shoe-cleaner, he should be the first in the 
parish." 

With apothegms like these, he braced 
the lax nerves of his coadjutor ; the sight 
of the warrior who slept in his armour, and 
fought all day, head erect, and nostrils 
quivering with the joy of the fray, put 
energy into the neophyte he had never 
dreamed of until now. Newton's stalwart 
personality got hold of the very soul of the 
recluse. While still learning his trade, as it 
were, he writes of a visit he had paid to St. 
Albans, a place, he says, which he " visited 
every day in thought." " The recollection 
of what passed there, and the consequences 
that followed it, fill my mind continually, 
and make the circumstances of a poor, 
transient, half-spent life so insipid and un- 
affecting that I have no heart to think or 
write much about them." 

Under the impetus of this self-disgust, he 
plunged into parish work of the most un- 
pleasing kind. Acting as a sub-curate to 
Newton, he spent much of the day in at- 
tendance upon sick cottagers, hearkening 
to the confessions of frightened, guilty 



Life at Olney loi 

souls, abject in the face of approaching 
death, the witness, every hour, of squalid 
poverty he could not relieve, and degra- 
dation beyond redemption. Filth, rags, 
— boorishness that returned railing for bless- 
ing, — sickened him on every side, yet he 
held bravely to the line of march designated 
by his leader. He, whom the presence of 
strangers silenced and made awkward, 
trampled diffidence in the mire under his 
feet, and led prayer-meetings, exhorting, 
and " engaging " in audible petitions in the 
name of his hearers. 

A reverend eulogist tells us that which 
makes the discharge of this self-imposed 
duty at once pitiable and heroic : 

*'I have heard him say, that when he expected to 
take the lead in social worship, his mind was always 
greatly agitated for some hours preceding. But his trep- 
idation wholly subsided as soon as he began to speak 
in prayer ; and that timidity, which he invariably felt at 
every appearance before his fellow-creatures, gave place 
to an awful yet delightful consciousness of the presence 
of his Saviour." 

It was the public-school hardening sys- 
tem over again, a good thing in its way, 
perhaps. Only there are boys and boys, 



102 William Cowper 

and men and men, and minds have not all 
the same poise. 

Two, at least, of those who loved him, 
felt, painfully, the peril involved in the 
subversion of inborn tastes, and habits that 
were the growth of years. Long afterward, 
Lady Hesketh reminded her sister of the 
misgivings they had had while apprentice- 
ship and practice were going on: 



" To such a mind — such a tender mind — and to such 
a wounded, yet lively, imagination as our cousin's, 1 am 
persuaded that eternal praying and preaching were too 
much. Nor could it, I think, be otherwise. One only 
proof of this I will give you, which our cousin mentioned, 
a few days ago, in casual conversation. He was saying 
that for one or two summers he had found himself under 
the necessity of taking his walk in the middle of the day, 
which, he thought, had hurt him a good deal. ' But,' 
continued he, ' 1 could not help it, for it was when Mr. 
Newton was here, and we made it a rule to pass four 
days in the week together. We dined at one, and it 
was Mr. Newton's rule for tea to be on the table at four 
o'clock, for at six we broke up.' 

" ' Well, then,' said I, ' if you had your time to your- 
self after six, you would have good time for an evening's 
walk.' 

' No,' said he. ' After six we had service or lecture, 
or something of that kind, that lasted until supper.' 

" 1 made no reply, but could not, and cannot help 
thinking, they might have made a better use of a fine 



Life at Olney 103 

summer's evening than by shutting themselves up to 
make long prayers. 

"1 hope I honour religion, and feel a reverence for re- 
ligious persons, but I do think there is something too 
puritanical in all this. 1 do not mean to give you my 
sentiments upon this conduct generally, but only as it 
might affect our cousin. For him I do not think it could 
be either proper or wholesome." 

There is true pathos in the sisters' tender 
mention of "our cousin," as if there were 
but one for them amid the many of their 
blood and name, and womanly wisdom in 
Harriet's fears and conclusion. 

John Newton was a Greatheart, whose 
burning zeal and Christlike ministry to 
God's poor and needy warranted the en- 
thusiastic devotion of his acolyte. His mis- 
take — made in love — was in insisting upon 
putting such harness as his own upon Mr. 
Fearing, and shouting for the battle between 
him and Apollyon. 



SLQS). 





CHAPTHR IX 

QUIET LIFE AT OLNEY — DEATH OF JOHN COWPER 
— OLNEY HYMNS — THIRD ATTACK OF IN- 
SANITY 

ANOTHER friend entertained views sim- 
ilar to Lady Hesketh's as to the 
propriety of the serious change in Cowper's 
habits and occupations. Joseph Hill, a 
popular lawyer, and, as we gather from 
the tone of Cowper's letters to him, more 
a man of the world than any other of his 
present associates, was not to be shaken in 
his love for the unordained curate by the 
slackening and cooling of the Olney corre- 
spondence. His invincible good humour 
under the lectures incorporated in Cowper's 
epistles, and his repeated proffers of pecuni- 
ary assistance, are tokens of friendship of 
the finest temper, and, more than the de- 
votion of his religious intimates, show the 
singular attraction the semi-recluse had for 
those who had ever really known him. 
104 







Z o 

_l < 

o s 

; ^ 

a. '^ 

i i 



Quiet Life at Olney 105 

It is painful to see how Cowper's grow- 
ing absorption in the round of labours ap- 
pointed by his spiritual adviser withdrew 
him, gradually, from such people as his 
Cousin Harriet and her husband, and even 
from his Evangelical kinspeople, Mrs. Cow- 
per and the Madans. Goldwin Smith 
quotes with sad sarcasm the epithet applied 
by one biographer to the daily and monthly 
routine of the Olney existence — "a. decided 
course of Christian happiness." Hill's lip 
may have been wrung by a smile as caustic 
in reading the reply to his many invitations 
to his former chum to run up to the city as 
his guest, make a round of visits among his 
relations, and get a taste of some other air 
than that in which he was vegetating. 
The season was the winter of 1769 — Janu- 
ary or February. The one promenade pos- 
sible for the joint households of Newton 
and Cowper was a gravel walk, thirty yards 
long, raised above the mud on each side of 
it, and on this it was Cowper's practice to 
tramp for a given time, dumb-bells in hand. 

'Mt affords but indifferent scope to the 
locomotive faculty," he writes, ''but it is 
all we have to move on for eight months 
of the year." 



io6 William Cowper 

Beyond the walls of the Vicarage lay "a 
populous place, inhabited chietly by the 
half-starved and the ragged of the earth," 
miserable in summer, utterly wretched in 
winter. Yet we know Cowper too well 
by now to question the sincerity of his 
declaration that he " prefers his home to 
any other spot of earth in the world." 

He continues : 

" My dear friend, 1 am obliged to you for your invita- 
tion ; but, being now long accustomed to retirement, 
which I was always fond of, I am more than ever un- 
willing to revisit those noisy and crowded scenes which 
I never loved, and which I now abhor. I remember you 
with all the friendship I ever professed, which is as much 
as 1 ever entertained for any man. But the strange and 
uncommon incidents of my life have given an entire new 
turn to my whole character and conduct, and rendered 
me incapable of receiving pleasure from the same em- 
ployments and amusements of which I could readily 
partake in former days." 

In the ensuing autumn he was sum- 
moned away from home and parish to 
stand at what was supposed to be the death- 
bed of his brother John. A deceitful rally 
of natural forces relieved William's anxiety 
for some weeks. Then came a relapse, 
and the elder brother hastened to Cambridge 
to fmd the patient in great agony of body, 



Death of John Cowper 107 

and in mental depression best described by 
his remark: 

"Brother, I seem to be marked out for 
misery. You know some people are so." 

The positions of the two were now 
strangely reversed. William became the 
comforter : 

" But that is not your case," he answered 
confidently. "You are marked out for 
mercy." 

From that hour he never left his brother's 
side, except for his meals, and to get a few 
hours' sleep, until the spirit and body en- 
tered into rest. A small pamphlet, which 
the survivor was led by love for the de- 
parted, and a sincere desire for the glory of 
God and the edification of His saints, to in- 
dite while the facts were fresh in his mind 
is entitled Adelphi. It contains A Sketch 
of the Character and an Account of the 
last illness of the late Rev. John Cowper, 
A.M., Felloiv of Bennet College, Cambridge, 
who finished his Course with Joy, 20 March. 
1770. 

The mortal struggle had lasted a whole 
month and four days. Then, "the Lord in 
Whose sight the death of His saints is pre- 
cious, cut short his sufferings, and gave 



io8 William Cowper 

him a speedy and peaceful departure," and 
the mourner returned to Olney to write 
letters announcing the affliction to distant 
friends and relatives, and, as I have said, to 
sit down to a detailed narrative of what he 
had witnessed while standing upon the 
uncertain ground dividing the living from 
the dead. 

In the next twelvemonth Hill invited him 
to London at least three times with the 
same result as before. The third invitation 
was declined in a few lines: 

" Believe me, dear friend, truly sensible of your invita- 
tion, 'though I do not accept it. Mj> peace of mind is of 
so delicate a constitution that the air of London will 
not agree with it. You have my prayers — the only re- 
turn I can make for your many acts of still-continued 
friendship." 

The sentence I have italicised is ominous. 
Southey's comment upon this and other 
letters of the same date is of like spirit 
with Professor Goldwin Smith's : 

" These may have been written in a frame of * settled 
tranquillity and peace,' but it was a tranquillity that had 
rendered his feelings of friendship torpid ; and if this 
was ' the only sunshine he ever enjoyed through the 
cloudy day of his afflicted life,' it was not the sunshine 
of a serene sky." 



Olney Hymns 109 

Mr. Greatheart Newton's panacea for a 
sorrowful heart and gloomy dreads was 
WORK. His disciple's docility and heroic 
self-sacrifice, in abandoning the study for 
the parochial round of cottage visitations 
and cottage prayer-meetings, had greatly 
endeared him to the superior. One bio- 
grapher intimates that Newton discerned 
symptoms in his coadjutor's mien or talk 
that suggested the propriety of some change 
in his mode of life. With Greatheart, Life 
and Action were synonyms. His one con- 
cession to his weak brother's constitutional 
idiosyncrasy was that he gave him different 
work to do, and such as was more con- 
genial to the natural bent of his mind. 
Cowper was a scholar and a poet. The 
little he had done in the literary arena be- 
fore he fell in with Newton had given sat- 
isfactory evidence of both these facts. 
Newton was himself a man of learning, and 
no mean writer of sacred verse. Witness 
such lyrics as 

" How sweet the Name of Jesus sounds 
In a believer's ear," 

and others in general use and justly es- 
teemed by all branches of the Church mili- 



1 10 William Cowper 

tant. His admiration of Cowper's talents 
had kept pace with the profound affection 
the latter had the rare gift of inspiring in all 
his intimates. Therefore, asserts the chroni- 
cler referred to just now, ''he wisely 
engaged him in a literary undertaking con- 
genial with his taste, suited to his admirable 
talents, and, perhaps, more adapted to alle- 
viate his distress than any other that could 
have been selected." 

The obedient neophyte was bidden to 
soften the poignancy of his grief for the 
loss of his only brother, and to recuperate 
nervous forces spent in that racking month 
and four days in the valley of the shadow 
of death, by collaborating with Newton in 
the preparation of the Olney Hymns. 

This collection, published by Newton after 
the failure of his colleague's mental health, 
was prefaced by an apology for the small 
size of the volume, and the expression of 
his reluctance to bring it out at all, " when 
he had so few of his friend's hymns to in- 
sert in the collection." For nearly half a 
century it was the favourite hymnal of 
Evangelical congregations in Great Britain 
and the United States. 1 have no hesita- 
tion in saying that Cowper's Olney hymns 



Olney Hymns 1 1 1 

— marked " C." in the earlier editions — won 
for their author a warmer abiding-place in 
the hearts of the devout worshippers in 
Establishment and Chapel than the more 
ambitious works that gave him a place in 
the foremost rank of English poets. 

" There is a fountain filled with blood," 

and 

" O, for a closer walk with God ! " 

have been translated into the language of 
every land where the standard of the Cross 
has been planted. 

No one can read these and others of the 
collection without feeling sure that the au- 
thor enjoyed writing them, and that, up to 
a certain period of time — or labour — the 
change of mental air and scene was rather 
beneficial than harmful. To this period be- 
longs a hymn which, besides being the 
most virile in tone and helpful in spirit, 
contains more real poetry than any other 
penned by him then, or ever. Every 
stanza of 

" God moves in a mysterious way " 

is a gem of holy inspiration, and each has 
been a leaf of healing to the stricken soul. 



1 12 William Cowper 

The moved imagination of one who had 
lain in the pit and miry clay and had yet 
been made, by sustaining grace, to stand 
upright, searches for figures at once apt 
and familiar, with which to strengthen his 
afflicted brethren, tossed with tempests, 
and not comforted. God 

" plants His footsteps in the sea, 
And rides upon the storm." 

The formation of the diamond in the hidden 
mine ; dark clouds, growing big with mercy, 
to break in blessing upon the boding watch- 
ers' heads; the bitter bud that is to blossom 
into sweetness — are so many variations of 
the theme — ''Trust in the Lord, at all limes; 
ye people, pour out your heart before Him: 
God is a refuge for us. ' ' 

It is infinitely affecting to note that, as 
the labour of love becomes a task, with 
conscience as the whipper-in, the spirit is 
keyed to a lower pitch; the cry of the 
human becomes more distinct and plaintive. 

" Where is the blessedness I knew?" 

indicates disease, and he casts about for a 
remedy. 



Olney Hymns 1 1 ; 

" The dearest idol I have known, 
Whate'er that idol be, 
Help me to cast it from Thy throne 
And worship only Thee." 

Introspection; analysis of hopes, of 
doubts, of heart-sinkings, of formalism in 
devotion — ah! it was a ghastly train that 
followed him into his study each day, and 
trooped about his bed at night, and would 
not down for prayer and fasting. 

He toiled upon the Hymn-book until 
January, 1773, the glooms within the 
prison-like dwelling near the Vicarage 
heavier than the fogs lying low upon the 
Ouse without, and confining his view to 
the muddy streets and hideous row of 
opposite houses. Whatever Mr. Newton 
saw, he kept his own counsel and abated 
naught of his faith in the final efficacy of 
his catholicon. What more consoling than 
meditation upon the truth of God's Word .^ 
what more helpful than to utter forth the 
goodness of the Lord ? 

What Mrs. Unwin saw — and dreaded 
— we are not told, but we can guess 
from what she did when, in after-days, 
it fell to her to allot themes for him to 
write upon. 



1 14 William Cowper 

One day in January, Cowper threw down 
his pen, and ''went mad again." 

"With deplorable consistency," he re- 
fused to go to church or the prayer-meetings 
held in the "Great House" ; he would 
neither pray himself nor have Mr. Newton 
pray with him, and could not be induced 
to set his foot in Mr. Newton's house. 
Then — perhaps Mrs. Unwin had known of 
it before — it came out that he had made an 
attempt upon his life as long ago as October, 
persuaded, Mr. Newton says, "through 
the power the enemy had of impressing 
his perturbed imagination, that it was the 
will of God, he should, after the example 
of Abraham, perform an expensive act of 
obedience, and offer, not a son, but him- 
self" 

Might not this have been a variation of 
the prayer deprecatory of 

" The dearest idol I have known " ? 

The Dean of St. Paul's, the 

"most ingenious of poets^ the most subtle of divines, 
. . . whose reputation for learned sanctity had scarcely 
sufficed to shelter him from scandal on the ground of 
his fantastic defence of suicide, was familiar with the 
idea of Death, and greeted him as a welcome old friend 
whose face he was glad to look on long and closely." 



Third Attack of Insanity 1 1 s 

Thus Edmund Gosse of William Cowper's 
great-grandfather. 

''Mrs. Anne Cowper numbered among 
her ancestors Dr. Donne, the poet," Thomas 
Wright remarks. "It is pleasant to be able 
to connect the one poet with the other." 

Pleasure that is darkly equivocal when 
we find Cowper, piteously unconscious of 
the force of the confession, writing to his 
cousin, Mrs. Bodham : 

" There is in me more of the Donne than the Cowper ; 
and 'though I love all of both names, and have a thou- 
sand reasons to love those of my own name, yet 1 feej 
the bond of nature draws me vehemently to your side. 
1 was thought, in the days of my childhood, much to 
resemble my mother ; and, in my natural temper, of 
which, at the age of fifty-eight I must be supposed to 
be a competent judge, can trace both her and my late 
uncle, your father. . . . Add to all this, I deal 
much in poetry, as did our venerable ancestor, the Dean 
of St. Paul's, and I think I shall have proved myself a 
Donne at all points." 

Given to introspection as he was — this, 
too, in ignorant imitation of the Dean of 
St. Paul's, "whose life had been spent in 
examining Man in the crucible of his own 
alchemist fancy, anxious to preserve to the 
very last his powers of unflinching spiritual 



1 16 William Cowper 

observation," — the doomed descendant de- 
scried nothing in his complacent inspection 
of the ancestral line to damp his satisfaction 
in the discovery that he was a "Donne at 
all points." 

When he would have nothing more to 
do with Mr. Newton, and took it into his 
poor, ill-used brain that Mrs. Unwin hated 
him, the perplexed and despairing twain 
abandoned the theory of diabolical posses- 
sion. Still, medical aid was not called in 
until, three months afterward, he agreed to 
spend a night in the Vicarage, and once 
there, stubbornly refused to go home. 
This sullen obstinacy almost lends a smack 
of humour to the situation when coupled 
with the Newtons' dismay. In the midst 
of it all, however — the inconvenience, ex- 
pense, and distress involved in the en- 
tertainment of such a guest, — it must be 
admitted that their hospitality was without 
grudging, and that the patient was always 
"our dear Mr. Cowper, one sent by the 
Lord to Olney, where " — writes Mr. New- 
ton — " he has been a blessing to many, a 
great blessing to myself." 

In March, Dr. Cotton was consulted and 
advised blood-letting and certain drugs that 




JOHN DONNE 

(FROM OLD PRINT IN THE POSSESSION OF BEVERLY CHEW, ESQ. 
OF NEW YORK' 



Third Attack of Insanity 1 1 7 

strengthened his body and made his insan- 
ity worse. For sixteen months, five of 
which were passed at the Vicarage, the 
patient never smiled. Then, Mr. Newton 
wrote with minuteness that testifies how 
close and affectionate was the watch kept 
upon his ward: 

"Yesterday, as he was feeding the 
chickens, — for he is always busy if he can 
get out-of-doors — some little incident made 
him smile." 

In a few days after this first glint of hope, 
Mrs. Unwin prevailed upon Cowper to re- 
turn to his own house, and his long-suffer- 
ing host heaved a grateful sigh. 

" Upon the whole I have not been weary of my cross. 
Besides the submission I owe to the Lord, I can hardly 
do or suffer too much for such a friend. ... He 
evidently grows better, though the main stress of his 
malady still continues. He has been hitherto almost 
exactly treading over again the dreary path he formerly 
trod at St. Albans. Some weeks before his deliverance 
there, he began to recover his attention which had long 
been absorbed and swallowed up in the depths of despair, 
so that he could amuse himself a little with other things. 
Into this state the Lord seems now to have brought him; 
so that, 'though he seems to think himself lost to hope, 
he can continually employ himself in gardening, and 
upon that subject will talk as freely as formerly, 'though 
he seldom notices other conversation ; and we can per- 



1 1 8 William Cowper 

ceive almost daily that his attention to things about him 
increases." 

His love of gardening and of dumb pets 
was what wise doctors nowadays call a 
" pointing of Nature." That much-abused 
Mother, turning, as it were, in despair, 
from the licensed fooling of those who pre- 
sume to be her aides, prompts her afflicted 
child to adventure his own cure. Southey 
says that Cowper '* understood his own 
case well enough to perceive that anything 
which would engage his attention without 
fatiguing it must be salutary." 

He looked after cucumbers, cabbages, ex- 
otic myrtles, and indigenous stock-gilly- 
flowers, fed the poultry, and brought up by 
hand three young hares, "Puss, Tiny, and 
Bess," making careful notes of their habits 
and peculiarities. After his recovery he 
wrote their biographies, — the most en- 
chanting memoirs of four-footed folk ever 
put upon paper for the delight of a dozen 
generations of bipeds. 

**I believe my name is up about the 
country for preaching people mad," John 
Newton once wrote to a friend, with sor- 
rowful naivete at which we might, but 
cannot, smile. 



Third Attack of Insanity 1 19 

" I suppose we have near a dozen " (in Olney) " in 
different degrees, disordered in their heads. This has 
been no small trial to me, and 1 have felt sometimes as 
1 suppose David might feel when the Lord smote 
Uzzah for touching the ark. ... I trust there is 
nothing in my preaching that tends to cast those down 
who ought to be comforted." 

He might have enlarged the prayerful 
hope into a wish that his eyes might be 
opened to discern the wisdom of apportion- 
ing burdens to the bearers, and the folly of 
breaking stones upon the road with a 
sculptor's mallet. 




CHAPTER X 

THE FATAL DREAM — CONVALESCENCE — FIRST 
VOLUME OF POEMS 

TO what may be called the Olney lunacy 
of our unhappy subject belongs the 
Story of the Fatal Dream well told by Mr. 
Wright in his Life of IVilliam Cowper. 



" One night, toward the end of February, he crossed 
the line that divided a life of hope from a life of despair. 
He had a Terrible Dream in which ' a Word ' was 
spoken. What the dream was he does not tell us. Nor 
does he tell us the 'word,' 'though from his various 
references to it and his malady, we know its import. 
'Return est de te ; periisti' (It is all over with thee; 
thou hast perished) was the thought ever uppermost in 
Cowper's mind. 

" It was revealed to him, as he thought, from heaven, 
that the God that made him, had doomed him to ever- 
lasting torment ; that God had even regretted that He 
had given existence to him. So deeply, indeed, was 
this engrained in his mind that, for many years, he 

120 



The Fatal Dream 121 

never offered a prayer — did not even ask a blessing on 
his food; his argument being that he * had no right to do 
so.'" 

Had John Cowper lived a decade longer, 
he would probably have been a fellow- 
sufferer with his more imaginative brother. 
John's hallucination was the vision of a 
gypsy peddler who had prophesied that he 
would not outlive his thirtieth year. 

''These fancies were," observed one 
writer, **but too surely indications of the 
same constitutional malady which so often 
embittered the existence of his brother." 

And, still, not one of them — patients, 
physicians, pastor, or friend — recalled and 
set in its proper place the gruesome figure 
of John Donne, wrapped in his winding- 
sheet, his feet in the burial-urn, — the man 
who cried out with his last breath, as it 
would seem in visionary rapture, "I were 
miserable if I might not die," — the divine 
who preached his own funeral sermon, and, 
when his mental powers were in their 
prime, defended suicide. 

While Cowper resumed, to some extent, 
his correspondence with such friends as 
Hill and William Unwin, sixteen months 
from the beginning of his third attack of 



122 William Cowper 

dementia, two years elapsed before he was 
again in a normal state of mind. 

Still obeying the beckoning finger of Na- 
ture, he passed many hours a day in the open 
air, building and glazing a miniature green- 
house, hardly larger than a modern Wardian 
case, and stocking it with pineapples. 

" I am pleased with a frame of four lights, doubtful 
whether the few pines it contains will ever be worth a 
farthing ; amuse myself with a greenhouse which Lord 
Bute could take upon his back and walk away with; and 
when 1 have paid it the accustomed visit and watered it, 
and given it air, I say to myself — ' This is not mine. 'T is 
a plaything lent me for the present. 1 must leave it 
soon.' " 

The morbid strain blended with every- 
thing he wrote or said. 

" My mind had always a melancholy cast, 
and is like some pools I have seen, which, 
though filled with black and putrid water, 
will nevertheless, in a bright day, reflect 
the sunbeams from their surface." 

Important things had come to pass in the 
small section of the outer world in which 
he was immediately interested, while he 
was lost to it. 

His first note after his long silence has a 
reference to his uncle Ashley's recovery 



Convalescence 123 

from a serious illness. " Having suffered 
so much by nervous fevers myself 1 know 
how to congratulate him upon his recov- 
ery," is a curious passage, as indicating 
ignorance of the real cause of his own 
protracted invalidism. " Other distempers 
only batter the walls; but they creep si- 
lently into the citadel, and put the garrison 
to the sword." 

Sir Thomas Hesketh's death drew him 
still farther out of the black shell of un- 
wholesome self-absorption. The worthy 
Baronet's friendship for his wife's favourite 
cousin shows him to have been a man of 
generous sympathies and superior to petty 
jealousies. 

" I knew," writes Cowper, " that I had a place in his 
affections, and from his own information, many years 
ago, a place in his will ; but little thought that, after the 
lapse of so many years, I should still retain it. His re- 
membrance of me, after so long a season of separation, 
has done me much honour and leaves me the more reason 
to regret his decease." 

An old Westminster school-fellow, Thur- 
low, in whose company he used to visit 
No. 30 Southampton Row, had been made 
Lord Chancellor; a fire had burned up a 
dozen houses in Olney, and caused much 



124 William Cowper 

suffering among the poor thus made poorer ; 
Mr. Newton's effort to lessen the chances 
of another conflagration by preventing the 
celebration of Guy Fawkes's day, when 
candles and torches often kindled the 
thatched roofs, was the occasion of a riot 
and a hubbub of threats against the curate 
and his house; the first edition of Oliiey 
Hymns was published and making its way 
slowly into favour with the churches. 
Lastly, and more important than all other 
changes put together, Mr. Newton had 
exchanged Olney for a London living. 

" If 1 were in a condition to leave Olney, 
too, 1 certainly would not stay in it," 
Cowper aroused himself to write to Mrs. 
Newton, March 4, 1780, while the smart of 
the separation was still fresh. 

"It is not attachment to the place that binds me 
here, but an unfitness for every other. I lived in it 
once, but now I am buried in it, and have no business 
with the world on the outside of my sepulchre. My 
appearance would startle them, and theirs would be 
shocking to me." 

With the key of his after-life in our hand 
we see significance in another letter, penned 
after the spring weather had fairly opened, 
the jasmine and honeysuckle in his small 



Convalescence 12s 

garden were in flower, and the hedges in 
the fields about Olney were white with 
''the May." 

" I deal much in ink, but not such ink as is employed 
by poets and writers of essays. Mine is a harmless 
fluid, and guilty of no deceptions but such as may pre- 
vail without the least injury to the person imposed upon. 
I draw mountains, valleys, wood, and streams, and 
ducks and dabchicks. I admire them myself, and Mrs. 
Unwin admires them, and her praise and my praise, put 
together, are fame enough for me." 

Every writer who has undertaken a bio- 
graphy of William Cowper has become his 
lover before the task was half done. His 
ingenuousness, his pain, and his patience, 
the vein of sportive humour darting across 
his darkest fancies like a fantastic zigzag of 
gold thread ; the depth and constancy of 
his affections, the sweetness of his sub- 
mission to reproof when dealt by one he 
loved — are so many anchors cast into our 
hearts. If other appeal to our sympathies 
were needed, it is made in the perception of 
the injury done to what Lady Hesketh ten- 
derly terms — "the wounded and lively im- 
agination of our cousin," by the heroic 
treatment resorted to for the cure of those 
wounds and the repression of that vivacity. 



126 William Cowper 

It costs us a conscious effort to do simple 
justice to one so thoroughly good, so really 
great as John Newton, while we dwell 
upon this dark age of his friend's experi- 
ence. He meant so well, and loved his 
stricken colleague so fondly that we draw 
back from acceptance of the harsh citation 
of the Curate of Olney as the instrument of 
the pitiable ruin that overtook his devoted 
disciple. Yet we cannot shut our eyes to 
the truth that their relations nearly resem- 
bled those of confessor and penitent, and 
that to write to, or talk with, Mr. Newton 
was the signal for that introversion of the 
spiritual vision which is most to be dreaded 
in the religious hypochondriac. It was in- 
finitely safer for Cowper to be drawing dab- 
chicks for Mrs. Unwin's inspection than to 
be holding his heart in the hollow of his 
hand, as a magician pours the magic ink 
into his palm, and to shorten mental and 
spiritual sight with peering into the black 
pool. 

At mid-summer of this same year (1780) 
he wrote to his ghostly father: 

" 1 wonder that a sportive thought should ever knock 
at the door of my intellects, and still more that it should 
gain admittance. It is as if Harlequin should intrude 



Convalescence 127 

himself into the gloomy chamber where a corpse lies in 
state. His antic gesticulations would be unseasonable at 
any rate, but more especially so if they should distort 
the features of the mournful attendants with laughter, 

" But the mind, long wearied with the sameness of a 
dull, dreary prospect, will gladly fix its eyes on anything 
that may make a little variety in its contemplations, 
'though it was but a kitten playing with its tail." 



A twentieth-century specialist in diseases 
of the mind would unhesitatingly prescribe 
the kitten, and lay stress upon friskiness as 
a desideratum. A hundred and almost 
a score years agone, a woman's love found 
out the scientist's secret, and womanly tact 
reduced it to practice. 

As another winter drew near with the 
certain prospect of such miseries as a cessa- 
tion of all gardening and country walks 
and such al fresco sights as hawthorn 
hedges, billowing fields of corn, hay-mak- 
ing, nest-building and swallow-flights, — 
that had diverted the convalescent's atten- 
tion from the images in the aforementioned 
inky pool, — Mrs. Unwin led him on to 
fashion other things than scratchy drawings 
with the pen he was beginning once more 
to love. How gradually and how artfully 
he was lured into the belief that the notion 



128 William Cowper 

and the motion were his own, we are left 
to imagine for ourselves. 

The letter to Mr. Newton, dated on the 
shortest day in the now gloomy year (Dec. 
21, 1780) breaks the news that he is again 
writing poetry. Mr. Newton has told him 
an anecdote in his last letter, over which 
Cowper and Mrs. Unwin "sincerely 
laughed." Such natural amusement, and 
the telling of it, was nothing new by now 
to him who had recorded (in 1774) with 
tears of joy, the first smile after sixteen 
months of gloom. Mr. Newton had ex- 
pressed to his correspondent his joyful con- 
fidence in the completeness of a recovery 
they all spoke of as ''a deliverance from 
the power of the Adversary." 

" Your sentiments with respect to me are exactly Mrs. 
Unwin's. She, like you, is perfectly sure of my deliver- 
ance, and often tells me so. I make but one answer, 
and sometimes none at all. That answer gives her no 
pleasure and would give you as little ; therefore, at this 
time I suppress it. It is better, on every account, that 
those who interest themselves so deeply in that event 
should believe the certainty of it than that they should 
not. It is a comfort to them, at least, if it is none to 
me, and, as I could not if I would, so neither would I, 
if I could, deprive them of it. . . . 

" At this season of the year and in this gloomy, un- 



First Volume of Poems 1 29 

comfortable climate, it is no easy matter for the owner 
of a mind like mine to divert it from sad subjects, and 
fix it upon such as may administer to its amusement. 
Poetry, above all things, is useful to me in this respect. 
While 1 am held in pursuit of pretty images, or a pretty 
way of expressing them, I forget everything that is irk- 
some, and, like a boy that plays truant, determine to 
avail myself of the present opportunity to be amused, 
and to put by the disagreeable recollection that I must, 
after all, go home and be whipped again. 

" It will not be long, perhaps, before you will receive 
a poem called The Progress of Error. » That will be 
succeeded by another, in due time, called Truth. 
Don't be alarmed ! I ride Pegasus with a curb. He 
will never run away with me again. I have even con- 
vinced Mrs. Unwin that I can manage him, and make 
him stop when 1 please.'' 

The barometer of his spirits rose steadily 
during the progress of the labour he once 
more delighted in. A letter to William Un- 
win, his first friend in the family, written 
on Christmas-eve, has the old ring of boy- 
ish fun. 

"Your poor sister! — she has many good qualities, 
and upon some occasions gives proof of a good under- 
derstanding. But as some people have no ear for music, 
so she has none for humour. Well, — if she cannot laugh 
at our jokes, we can, however, at her mistakes, and in 
this way she makes us ample amends for the disappoint- 
ment. Mr. Powley is much like herself : if his wife 
overlooks the jest he will never be able to find it. They 



130 William Cowper 

were neither of them born to write epigrams or ballads, 
and I ought to be less mortified at the coldness with 
which they entertain my small sallies in the way of 
drollery, when 1 reflect that if Swift himself had had no 
other judges, he would never have found one admirer." 

His private correspondence became again 
voluminous, and his letters on every sub- 
ject are perfect of their kind. He makes 
comedies of the trivial happenings in Olney 
where, as he had once said, "occurrences 
were as scarce as cucumbers at Christmas " ; 
he sends rhymed thanks for gifts of fish 
and oysters from London, and a doggerel 
inscription with a cucumber of his own 
raising; tells of long tramps through the 
snow in January; takes lively interest in 
the details of printing and publishing, — and 
on May i, 1781, thus apprises William Un- 
win of the completion of the work that has 
kept his head above the black waters: 

"On the press, and speedily will be published, in one 
volume, octavo, price three shillings — Poems by IVil- 
liam Cowper, of the Inner Temple, Esqr. You may sup- 
pose, by the size of the publication, that the greatest part 
of them have been long kept secret, because you, yourself, 
have never seen them. But the truth is that they are, 
most of them, except what you have in your possession, 
the produce of the last winter. Two-thirds of the com- 
pilation will be occupied by four pieces, the first of 



First Volume of Poems 1 3 1 

which sprang up in the month of December, and the 
last of them in the month of March. They contain, I 
suppose, in all, about two thousand and five hundred 
lines, and are known, or to be known in due time, by 
the names of Table Talk — The Progress of Error — 
Truth — Expostulation. Mr. Newton writes a Preface, 
and Johnson is the publisher. . . . Johnson has 
heroically set all peradventures at defiance, and takes 
the whole charge upon himself. So out 1 come ! " 

Each of the two thousand and five hun- 
dred lines passed under Mr. Newton's eyes 
before it went to the press. Such as he ob- 
jected to as savouring of unseemly levity, or 
as too "strong" for a refined Christian 
taste, were humbly expunged, or gratefully 
altered by the author. 

Goldwin Smith's comment upon this 
censorship and the manner thereof is so 
replete with dry humour that 1 transcribe, 
and 5// Ascribe to, it: 

"Newton would not have sanctioned any poetry 
which had not a distinctly religious object, and he re- 
ceived an assurance from the poet that the lively passages 
were introduced only as honey to the rim of the medic- 
inal cup to commend its healing contents to the lips of 
a giddy world. The Rev. John Newton must have been 
exceedingly austere if he thought the quantity of honey 
used was excessive." 

The publisher, on the other hand, insisted 



132 William Cowper 

that Mr. Newton's preface should be with- 
drawn, "not for containing anything of- 
fensively peculiar, but as being thought too 
pious for a world that grew more foolish 
and more careless as it grew older." 

There are lines in the thin volume that 
will live while the literature they adorn is 
read. As might have been expected, the 
effect of the whole was that of drab-tinted 
didacticism. The chief good wrought by 
them was their leverage in rescuing their 
author from the morass of religious melan- 
choly, and setting him upon the sunny 
levels of active employment and healthful 
association with his fellow-man. 

Evangelical circles received the Poems 
doubtfully — when they received them at 
all — as being satirical where they should 
have been homiletical. Mr. Newton's pre- 
face might have ballasted the otherwise 
crazy shallop, but this Johnson could not 
foresee. Literary critics took the author 
more seriously than he wished to be taken, 
ignoring the poetic principle which our 
anointed eyes can discern here and there, 
and bestowing a sort of bored praise upon 
the moral precepts inculcated in the ''dull 
sermon in indifferent verse." Moralists 



First Volume of Poems 1 13 

like Franklin, and reformers like Cobden, 
approved the work and said as much ; 
William Unwin wrote that his wife had 
laughed and cried over it; the Rev. William 
praised cordially, and dispraised discrimin- 
atingly, and the publisher saw enough 
that was promising in his careful perusal of 
the proof-sheets to move him to the ex- 
pressed wish that the author would keep 
his pen busy. 

The thistle-down of circumstance which 
was the germ of the second volume must 
be left for another chapter. 




CHAPTER XI 

MRS. UNWIN — LADY AUSTEN— JOHN GILPIN 

SOUTHEY, the most voluminous, if not 
the most painstaking, of Cowper's 
biographers, denies doggedly that any 
thought of marriage ever entered into the 
mutual relations of the poet and Mrs. Un- 
win. The one argument he adduces in 
support of the assertion is the positive 
knowledge that " no such engagement was 
either known or suspected by Mr. Newton," 
and the extreme improbability that it could 
have been concealed from him had it 
existed. ' 

Mr. Goldwin Smith voices the opinion of 
every other writer who has dealt with the 
subject, and of those who were personally 
cognizant of the romantic intimacy — in 
some respects unlike any other platonic 
affection that has furnished a theme for 
history : 

134 



Mrs. Unwin 135 

• " It seems clear, notwithstanding Soutiiey's assertion 
to the contrary, that they at one time meditated mar- 
riage, possibly as a propitiation to the evil tongues which 
did not spare even this most innocent connexion, but 
they were prevented from fulfilling their intention by a 
return of Cowper's malady. They became companions 
for life. Cowper says they were as mother and son to 
each other ; but Mrs. Unwin was only seven years older 
than he. To label their connexion would be impossible, 
and to try to do it would be a platitude. In his poems 
Cowper calls Mrs. Unwin ' Mary ' ; she seems always to 
have called him 'Mr. Cowper.' It is evident that her 
son, a strictly virtuous and religious man, never had the 
slightest misgiving about his mother's position." 

The concise summing up of the case cov- 
ers it so well that a minor chronicler may 
well be diffident in the thought of subjoin- 
ing a reflection or two in confirmation of 
the truth thus established. 

Mrs. Powley, Mrs. Unwin's only daugh- 
ter, a modest, well-educated girl, as virtu- 
ous and religious as her brother, and fondly 
attached to her mother, became the wife 
of an Evangelical clergyman, strict to rigid- 
ity in his principles and prejudices, the last 
man of Mrs. Unwin's circle who would 
have condoned an association he regarded 
as questionable. Mrs. Powley disapproved 
of the money spent by her mother in bear- 
ing her part of the expense of " Orchard 



\}6 William Cowper 

Side" — the OIney home, — but "esteemed 
Cowper as a man," and, up to Mrs. Un- 
win's death, the relations between her and 
the Powleys continued affectionate and 
cordial. 

John Newton and his wife were the con- 
stant companions of their next-door neigh- 
bours, and no thought of evil in that quarter, 
— or even the semblance of evil — seems to 
have entered their minds. Messages to and 
from Mrs. Unwin went back and forth in 
Cowper's letters to the husband and wife 
after their removal to London. The know- 
ledge of Mrs. Unwin's vigilant guardian- 
ship over their beloved friend was the 
greatest comfort Newton had in his separa- 
tion from the convalescent. 

Newton's successor in the Olney curacy 
was Thomas Scott, afterwards extensively 
known through Scoff's Commeiifarv of flu 
Bible, still a text-book in some theological 
seminaries, and a prime authority in family 
and Bible-class in the last generation. Al- 
though of Newton's school of thought, he 
was not attractive to Cowper, now super- 
sensitive from the effects of his recent ill- 
ness. With excellent judgment Newton 
did not oppose his patient's disinclination 



Mrs. Unwin 137 

to transfer to the new incumbent the con- 
fidence that had existed between pastor 
and pupil. He therefore introduced and 
commended Cowper to a dissenting min- 
ister in the near neighbourhood, the Rev. 
William Bull. The two affiliated at sight 
and forthwith became friends. "Mr. Bull 
is an honest man," was Cowper's first 
encomium. Subsequently he says, '' he is 
a Dissenter, but a liberal one " ; writes to 
him as '' Carissime Taiirorum, ' ' invites him 
to smoke in his greenhouse whenever he 
will, borrows from and lends him books, 
and when Mr. Bull is ill, entreats him and 
his wife to ''come to us, and Mrs. Un- 
win shall add her attentions and her skill 
to that of Mrs. Bull. We will give you 
broth to heal your bowels, and toasted rhu- 
barb to strengthen them, and send you back 
as brisk and cheerful as we wish you to be 
always." 

From the letters that passed freely be- 
tween the dissenting divine and his friend 
it is plain that the former was not backward 
in priestly admonition when he thought it 
was needed. 

" Both your advice and your manner of 
giving it are gentle and friendly, and like 



138 William Cowper 

yourself," writes Cowper in 1782, after Mr. 
Bull had urged upon him the duty of 
prayer. 

This upright man and his "virtuous and 
religious " helpmeet were Mrs. Unwin's 
firm friends and frequent visitors. 

Nothing is clearer than that the best peo- 
ple who witnessed the life led by the pair, 
"so singularly joined," as we say, saw 
nothing unnatural, much that was com- 
mendable, and perhaps more that was 
highly desirable, in the unlabellable con- 
nexion. They may have become so used 
to the sight of it as not to marvel with the 
exceeding admiration which is ours, over 
those sixteen months of heroic patience, of 
tenderness that was unspeakable, and faith 
in Heaven's mercy and the might of human 
love that was sublime, — during which God's 
earth had but one all-mastering interest for 
this delicately bred woman — the dumbly 
despairing maniac considered by all but 
herself as past cure. He would let no one 
else minister to his wants, yet persisted' in 
the belief that she, too, was against him, 
and hated her hotly for it. Other women 
have gone to the gates of death, and some 
have passed joyfully through them, for 



Mrs. Unwin 139 

love's sake. Mary Unwin voluntarily en- 
tered hell and stayed there for a year-and-a- 
half upon the barest hope that hers might 
be the hand that would lead her best be- 
loved forth, in God's good time. 

What manner of person was the heroine 
of the unique love-story ? 

I write this page with her picture before 
me, a full-length portrait disfigured by the 
costume and the artistic taste of that day. 
She sits under a tree in the garden of the 
Olney Vicarage, the conventional broad- 
brimmed garden-hat upon her lap, one hand 
raised, pointing at nothing with a conven- 
tional index-finger. Her forehead is un- 
usually high and broad ; the eyes are large 
and gentle; the face a fine oval; the feat- 
ures are delicately moulded; the space be- 
tween the brows bespeaks courage, and of 
a fine order. The portrait may, or may not, 
convey to us a just idea of William Cow- 
per's housekeeper, his mother, his rescuing, 
sustaining, and inspiring angel. We pass 
from the contemplation to a longer study 
of another and a pen-picture — what may 
be called a half-length sketch — the fidelity 
of which is not open to question. 

A woman's portrait of another woman is 



140 William Cowper 

seldom egregiously flattered unless painter 
and subject are more than merely good 
friends. When Harriet Hesketh sat down 
to give her impressions of Mary Unwin to 
her most confidential correspondent, she 
had known the mistress of the Olney re- 
treat well for many weeks, having been 
continually in the society of her cousin and 
his hostess with the best possible advant- 
ages of studying the latter's character and 
manners. She evidently chooses her words 
with care: 

" She is very far from grave. On the contrary she is 
cheerful and gay, and laughs de bon cceur upon the 
smallest provocation. Amidst all the little puritanical 
words which fall from her, de temps en temps, she seems 
to have by nature a great fund of gayety. Great indeed 
it must have been not to have been totally overcome by 
the close confinement in which she has lived, and the 
anxiety she must have undergone for one whom she cer- 
tainly loves as well as one human being can love another. 
1 will not say she idolises him, because that she would 
think wrong. But she certainly seems to possess the 
truest regard and affection for this excellent creature, 
and, as 1 before said, has, in the most literal sense of 
the words, no will, or shadow of inclination, but what 
is his. . . . 

" When she speaks upon grave subjects, she does ex- 
press herself with a puritanical tone, and in puritanical 
expressions, but on all other subjects she seems to have 



Mrs. Unwin 141 

a great disposition to cheerfulness and mirth, and, in- 
deed, had she not, could not have gone through all she 
has. I must say, too, that she seems to be very well- 
read in the English poets, as appears by little quotations 
v^hich she makes from time to time, and has a true 
taste for what is excellent in that way. There is some- 
thing truly affectionate and sincere in her manner. No 
one can express more heartily than she does, her joy to 
have me at Olney ; and, as this must be for his sake, it 
is an additional proof other regard and esteem for him." 

Mr. Newton paid a visit to his former 
cure of souls pending the publication of 
the Poems, being the guest, while there, 
of Cowper and Mrs. Unwin, and bringing 
into their home, with the bracing breeziness 
of his personality, a flavour of London and 
life that made his departure a depressing 
regret. 

" When you came, I determined as much as possible 
to be deaf to the suggestions of despair ; that if 1 could 
contribute but little to the pleasure of the opportunity, 
1 might not dash it with unseasonable melancholy, and, 
like an instrument with a broken string, interrupt the 
harmony of the concert," 

said Cowper's first letter after his friend's 
return to London. 

In the same epistle he remarks that *' Mrs. 
Unwin suffered more upon the occasion 
than when you first took leave of Olney." 



142 William Cowper 

The melancholy of the reactionary quiet 
was brightened by the flutter of a fashion- 
able woman across the front windows of 
the Unwin-Cowper house as a butterfly 
might stray into a work-room. She was 
the sister of a clergyman's wife resident at 
Clifton, the next village to Olney, and was 
now on a visit to her. The two had an 
errand at a shop opposite to Mrs. Unwin's, 
and Cowper, strolling, aimless and restless, 
up and down the parlour, chanced to see 
the stranger, and asked, interestedly, who 
she was. 

Mrs. Unwin, surprised and pleased at the 
question, replied that she was Lady Austen, 
a baronet's widow, and lived in London. 
She was further gratified by Cowper's re- 
quest that she would call the ladies in and 
invite them to tea. He put such force upon 
his shyness as to remain where he was un- 
til they entered, and to engage in conver- 
sation with Lady Austen, and, the visit 
over, escorted the sisters all the way to 
Clifton. 

**She is a lively, agreeable woman; has 
seen much of the world, and accounts it a 
great simpleton — as it is," he wrote to 
Newton, some days afterward. "She 



Lady Austen 143 

laughs, and makes laugh, and keeps up a 
conversation without seeming to labour 
at it." 

A fortnight more took to London and to 
William Unwin's parsonage a lively descrip- 
tion of a picnic to *'the Spinnie," where 
the party dined in the root-house, Lady 
Austen's lackey and a boy from the Unwin 
house having "driven a wheelbarrowful of 
eatables and drinkables to the scene of our 
Fete Champetre." 

Then the greenhouse is converted into a 
summer parlour, 

" by far the pleasantest retreat in Olney. We eat, 
drink, and sleep where we always did ; but here we 
spend all the rest of our time, and find that the sound of 
the wind in the trees, and the singing of birds are much 
more agreeable to our ears than the incessant barking of 
dogs and screaming of children. Not to mention the 
exchange of a sweet-smelling garden for the putrid 
exhalations of Silver End." 

''The myrtles ranged before the windows 
made the most agreeable blind imaginable," 
and Lady Austen one of the most agreeable 
companions. 

" A person who has seen much of the world and un- 
derstands it well, has high spirits, a lively fancy and 
great readiness of conversation, introduces a sprightliness 



144 William Cowper 

into such a scene as this, which, if it was peaceful be- 
fore, is not the worse for being a little enlivened. . . . 
The present curate's wife " — Mrs. Scott — " is a valuable 
person, but has a family of her own, and 'though a 
neighbour, is not a very near one." 

Finally, William Unwin is presented in 
London to Lady Austen, who 

"loves everything that has any connexion with your 
mother. She is, moreover, fond of Mr. Scott's preach- 
ing, wishes to be near her sister, and has set her heart 
upon one of the ' two mansions ' that form the Unwin 
dwelling. It is to be repaired and fitted up with the 
furniture from her London house ; a door is to be opened 
in the garden wall, and the two households are to form 
one family, in effect." 

As might have been foreseen, the beauty 
of the plan was marred by occasional mis- 
understandings : a capricious humour of 
Lady Austen's ; a confidential agreement 
between Cowper and Mrs. Unwin that " her 
vivacity was sometimes too much for them. 
Occasionally, perhaps, it might refresh and 
revive them, but it more frequently ex- 
hausted them." On the whole, however, 
and in spite of one decided " tiff," followed 
by a reconciliation between the ladies, 
ushered in by a flood of tears and a French 
embrace on the part of Lady Austen — all 
ran blithely for several months. 



Lady Austen 145 

The other half of Orchard Side— "that 
part of our great building" (prison-like and 
tumble-down) ''which is at present occu- 
pied by Dick Coleman, his wife, child, and 
a thousand rats " — was, after due consider- 
ation, pronounced untenable for a woman 
of fashion, however evangelically inclined. 
The Vicarage was not occupied by the 
Scotts, and Lady Austen set up her house- 
hold gods there. "A smart, stone build- 
ing, well-sashed, but much too good for 
the living," in Cowper's opinion, it was 
thronged with reminiscences of the New- 
tons and of their neighbour's perverse resid- 
ence in it, during his lunacy. The field 
intervening between the garden-wall of 
Orchard Side and that of the Vicarage is 
known to this day as the "Guinea Field," 
Newton and Cowper having paid a guinea 
yearly for the right of way through it. A 
gate was cut in each wall, and a well-beaten 
footpath ran across the field from one to 
the other. 

"Lady Austen and we pass our days al- 
ternately at each other's chateau," Cowper 
tells William Unwin, merrily. " In the 
morning 1 walk with one or the other of 
the ladies, and in the afternoon, wind 



146 William Cowper 

thread. Thus did Hercules, and thus prob- 
ably did Samson, and thus do I." 

He may have been holding a skein for the 
lively talker, one afternoon, when, observ- 
ing him to be more grave and silent than 
common, she dashed into a rattling recital 
of the story of John Gilpin, one of the ab- 
surd stories that had amused her in her 
childhood. She told and acted it so well 
that Cowper lay awake that night laughing 
over it, and had worked it into a ballad by 
the time he arose in the morning. 

*' You tell me that John Gilpin made you 
laugh tears," wrote the author to William 
Unwin, "and that the ladies at Court are 
delighted with my Poems. Much good 
may they do them ! " 

The knowledge that he was thought of 
and with admiring pleasure beyond the 
horizon of Olney was, nevertheless, stimu- 
lus to fancy and incentive to action. The 
thrill and glow of the new springtime of his 
life was in every nerve and vein. And 
Lady Austen, if sometimes too vivacious to 
the sober pair in the summer or the winter 
parlour, was a strengthening cordial when 
taken at the right time and in the right 
way. She has the credit of having talked 



John Gilpin 147 

over the disaster of the Royal George 
(which went down in a cahn sea, with all 
on board) until the poet's imagination took 
fire and he produced the verses which have 
brought the story down to us. Encouraged 
— as she might well be — by the notable 
success of these ventures, she essayed a 
bolder. 

" On her first settlement in our neighbourhood,' I made 
it my particular business (tor at that time I was not em- 
ployed in writing, having published my first volume and 
not begun my second) to pay my devoirs to her lady- 
ship every morning at eleven. Customs very soon be- 
come laws. I began The Task, for she was the lady 
who gave me the Sofa for a subject." 

This quotation from a letter written in 
1786 to Lady Hesketh will be continued 
presently. From other sources we have a 
glimpse of the scene of Lady Austen's mem- 
orable proposal — how important neither 
she nor her hearer suspected. During one 
of his morning visits, half-reclining on her 
sofa, a coquette's favourite throne in a day 
when high-backed chairs and backless 
stools were the seats in common use, she 
bantered Cowper upon his laziness. Why 
did he not fall to work upon something 
really worthy of his genius, — an epic, or a 



148 William Cowper 

sustained poem in blank verse, after the 
manner of other really great poets ? Half- 
laughing, half-impatient, her guest replied 
that " he could not think of a subject." 

*' You should never be at a loss for sub- 
jects," she retorted. ''They are to be 
found everywhere." 

''Perhaps you can give me one?" as 
carelessly as he had spoken before. 

She let her white hand fall upon the arm 
of her sofa. 

" I can and I will. Write upon my Sofa." 

Within the hour the first lines were 
penned: 

" I sing The Sofa — I who lately sang 
Faith, Hope and Charity. . . . 
August and proud 
Th' occasion, for the Fair commands the song." 




CHAPTER XII 

LADY AUSTEN'S FLIGHT — RENEWED CORRE- 
SPONDENCE WITH LADY HESKETH 

SO captivating was Lady Austen's so- 
ciety both to Cowper and Mrs. 
Unwin," says one record, "that these in- 
timate neighbours might be almost said to 
make one family, as it became their custom 
to dine always together, alternately, in the 
houses of the two neighbours." 

Cowper writes of the same period to 
William Unwin: 

" From a scene of the most uninterrupted 
retirement, we have passed at once into a 
state of constant engagement. Not that 
our society is much multiplied. The addi- 
tion of an individual has made all this 
difference." 

•We have heard of the luncheon at the 
Spinnie, the thread-winding, and the daily 
eleven-o'clock call. We have to thank her 
149 



150 William Cowper 

who inspired The Task for the prettiest 
picture of a home-evening in all literature, 
and which was outlined and filled in from 
the life of the joint family in the winter 
succeeding the beginning of a poem that 
was to make the author, at last, famous. 

" Now, slir the fire, and close the shutters fast ; 
Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa 'round. 
And while the bubbling and loud-hissing urn 
Throws up a steamy column, and the cups 
That cheer, but not inebriate, wait on each, — 
So, let us welcome peaceful evening in. 

This folio of four pages, happy work ! 

Which not even critics criticise, that holds 

Inquisitive attention while 1 read. 

Fast-bound in chain of silence, which the fair, 

'Though eloquent themselves, yet fear to break ; — 

What is it but a map of busy life. 

Its fluctuations and its vast concerns ? " 

The picture is perfect in all its parts. We 
have Mrs. Unwin's parlour, which was also 
Cowper's study; the round central table, 
littered with books and papers, the shaded 
lamp drawn to his left elbow; his face, 
illuminated with thought, his quivering 
nostrils and shining eyes, as he reads to 
the spellbound women the pages written 
since last night's sitting. Without, fogs 



Lady AusteiVs Flight i ^ i 

and chill and the dead silence of a stagnant 
country-town have dominion over the flat 
landscape. Everything of warmth and 
light and cheer to be found in the wide and 
weary world is enfolded in the pulsing 
heart of this home. 

What kept Lady Austen in Olney after 
the novelty of her new caprice wore off ? 
The query will descend past our generation 
to others as inquisitive and as puzzled. 
She had lived in France and in London; 
she had money, plenty of society of her 
own sort, and liberty to travel and to dwell 
where she pleased. Cowper, afterwards a 
distinguished man, was known to but a 
small section of the then circumscribed 
literary world. If it pleased her humour to 
patronise a poet, and her vanity to captivate 
the shy genius who shunned the face of 
most men and all women save one, she 
paid dearly for the indulgence by giving up 
her town-house and town-friends to im- 
mure herself for a whole year in Olney. 

That she was "an admirer of Mr. Scott 
as a preacher, and of your two humble 
servants now in the greenhouse, as the 
most agreeable creatures in the world," and 
had, at first sight, fallen violently in love 



152 William Cowper 

with William Unwin's mother, does not, in 
the eye of cool, reasonable lookers-on at 
the little drama, begin to account for the 
freak. 

Her portrait, '*in the character of La- 
vinia," gives us a really beautiful woman, 
whose sentimental languish of eyelids and 
lip-lines and head does not shut out the 
strong possibilities of coquetry discernible 
in mouth and eyes. She was a spoiled 
child of fortune who liked her own way, 
and would strain many points to get it. 
And still the marvel remains that she 
thought it worth her while to strain any 
one of them as far as the fenny regions of 
the Ouse and the muddy little town in 
which she folded her bright wings for all 
those months. 

We are not stunned, therefore, and 
scarcely startled, by reading a letter to Wil- 
liam Unwin, date of July 12, 1784, in which, 
after stating that his sister, Mrs. Powley, 
has left OIney that evening after a visit to 
her mother, and sends a message to her 
brother, he continues: 

" You are going to Bristol. A lady, not long since 
our very near neighbour, is probably there ; she was 
there very lately. If you should chance to fall into her 




LADY AUSTEN IN THE CHARACTER OF LAVINIA 

FROM A DRAWING BY W. HARVEY FROM THE ORIGINAL BY ROMNEY 



Lady Austen's Flight i s 3 

company, remember, if you please, that we found the 
connexion on some accounts an inconvenience ; that we do 
not wish to renew it, and conduct yourself accordingly. 
A character with which we spend all our time should be 
made on purpose for us. Too much, or too little, of 
any single ingredient spoils all. In the instance in ques- 
tion, the dissimilitude was too gi'eat not to be felt 
continually, and consequently made our intercourse 
unpleasant. 

" We have reason, however, to believe that she has 
given up all thoughts of a return to Olney." 

Hayley says in so many words that Lady 
Austen hoped that Cowper would marry 
her, and that Mrs. Unwin's jealousy of his 
liking for the newcomer broke off the con- 
nexion. This may be true so far as the 
wish and expectation of an offer of mar- 
riage from the engaging genius she had 
taken up went with the fascinating widow. 
That she cared to espouse an impecunious 
man of fifty-three, who had been thrice 
deranged', and would be prevented by a 
dread of a recurrence of the disorder from 
ever entering her world of gay society, — is 
preposterous. It is quite within the limits 
of likelihood that her thirst for admiration 
tempted her on to a flirtation with the 
recluse. Like all of her class, a conquest 
was a conquest, however undesirable the 



154 William Cowper 

victim. Cowper wrote charmingly com- 
plimentary lines to her; his conversation 
was entertaining and, to a woman of her 
sense and education, instructive, and he 
was on the high road to Fame, thanks, 
mainly, to her discovery of his abilities and 
the inspiration of her companionship. It 
was not a contemptible quarry that she 
hawked at, after all, and the chase was 
something out of the ordinary line of net- 
setting and beau-catching. 

As a fellow-woman, 1 confess to a mis- 
chievous curiosity to know what changes 
flitted over the sparkling countenance of 
one of the eloquent Fair — 

" Fast-bound in chain of silence " — 

as the readings proceeded, until these lines 
were rendered in Cowper's best manner: 

" And, witness, dear companion of my walks, 
Whose arm this twentieth winter I perceive 
Fast-locked in mine, with pleasure such as love, 
Confirmed by long experience of thy worth 
And well-tried virtues, could alone inspire — 
Witness a joy that thou hast doubled long. 
Thou know'st my praise of Nature most sincere, 
And that my raptures are not conjured up 
To serve occasions of poetic pomp, 
But genuine — and art partner of them all." 



Lady Austen's Flight iS5 

A sober resume of the rise, progress, and 
fall of the Austen influence in Olney is 
given by Cowper in the confidential letter 
to Lady Hesketh from which quotation was 
made in the last chapter, and we have no 
reason to doubt that he told the whole 
truth — as far as it was known to him. 
Love-making and marriage were matters 
he had dismissed finally, and most sensibly, 
from his thoughts.. If Lady Austen needed 
other proof of this than she must have had 
in the thorough understanding existing be- 
tween the couple now in the twentieth 
year of their unique companionship, it is a 
pity she could not have read in this epistle 
to his best-beloved cousin how insidiously 
and surely The Task ousted from the poet's 
mind and heart her who had implanted 
the germ of the poem. 

" Being once engaged in the work, I be- 
gan to feel the inconvenience of my morn- 
ing attendance " (/. e., the eleven-o'clock 
visit to the ''other house ") — is a sharp and 
unintentionally cruel stroke. 

" We had seldom breakfasted ourselves 'till ten, and 
the intervening hour was all the time that 1 could find 
in the whole day for writing, and occasionally it would 
happen that the half of that hour was all that 1 could 



156 William Cowper 

secure for that purpose. But there was no remedy. 
Long usage had made that which at first was optional, a 
point of good manners, and consequently of necessity, 
and 1 was forced to neglect The Task, to attend upon 
the Muse who had inspired the subject. But she has ill 
health, and before I had quite finished the work, was 
obliged to repair to Bristol. 

" Thus, as I told you, my clear, the cause of the many 
interruptions that I mentioned, was removed, and now, 
except the Bull that 1 spoke of, we seldom have any 
company at all." 

Wise Lady Austen! When she had be- 
come '* the cause of the many interrup- 
tions," she found Olney damp and the 
"other house" incommodious for an in- 
valid, and discreetly effaced herself. 

Commentator Scott dispatched the tale 
of the rupture, which served Mrs. Scott 
and the Olney people for gossip for many 
a long day, in a scathing sentence: 

"Who can be surprised that two women 
should be continually in the society of one 
man, and quarrel sooner or later with each 
other } " 

How unjust the critical divine's judgment 
was in one particular case, however astute 
the conclusion drawn from observation of 
such triangular alliances in the general, we 
shall see, by and by. 



Lady Austen's Flight isy 

Goldwin Smith has a graceful word of 
dismissal for the baronet's widow from the 
stage of our biography : 

''Whatever the cause may have been, 
this bird of paradise, having alighted for a 
moment in Olney, took wing, and was 
seen no more." 

In a letter to William Unwin, written a 
year after Lady Austen's flitting, Cowper 
says: 

" I was in low spirits, yesterday, when your parcel 
came and raised tiiem. Every proof of attention and 
regard to a man who lives in a vinegar-bottle is welcome 
from his friends on the outside of it. . . . I have 
had more comfort, far more comfort in the connexions I 
have found within the last twenty years than in the 
more numerous ones that 1 had before. 

"(Memorandum. — The latter are almost all Unwins 
or Unwinisms.) 

" You are entitled to my thanks also for the facetious 
engravings oi John Gilpin. A serious poem is like a 
swan ; it flies heavily, and never far. But a jest has the 
wings of a swallow that never tire, and that carry it 
into every nook and corner." 

One copy was a carrier-pigeon, and, 
''homing," brought back to him "the 
days he had thought he should see no 
more." Lady Hesketh had lived much out 
of England for the past decade ; the corre- 



1^8 William Cowper 

spondence between Cowper and herself 
had been interrupted for seven years, first 
by his third and protracted illness, and then 
by his steady conviction that he had no 
right to hold frequent communication with 
the partners of what he considered his days 
of worldliness and sin. John Gilpin gal- 
loped through the length and breadth of 
the United Kingdom, and could not escape 
the eyes of two women who read every 
line from *'our cousin's" pen. Harriet's 
heart bounded with joy at "seeing that he 
could once more indulge a playful temper, 
and sport upon light subjects as he had 
been wont to do in former days." While 
the glad impulse was upon her, she wrote, 
recalling herself to him in the old strain of 
sisterly tenderness. 

Cowper's heart broke bounds in the gush 
of love and memory thus evoked: 

"We are all grown young again!" he 
cried, and rushed on in the old impetuous 
fashion to tell her what had come to him, 
what he had been doing, and where, and 
with whom, he had been living for a score 
of years, during which he had "recollected 
with the greatest pleasure a thousand scenes 
in which our two selves have formed the 



Renewed Correspondence iso 

whole of the drama." He paid a feeling 
tribute to Sir Thomas, and added that his 
generous provision for his widow **was 
the last, and the best proof he could give 
of a judgment that never deceived him 
when he would give himself leisure to 
consult it." 

" I have lived these twenty years with Mrs. Unwin 
to whose affectionate care of me it is, under Providence, 
that I live at all. But I do not account myself happy in 
having been, for thirteen of those years, in a state of 
mind that has made all that care and attention necessary; 
an attention and a care that have injured her health, and 
which, had she not been uncommonly supported, must 
have brought her to the grave. 

" 1 am delighted with what you tell me of my uncle's 
good health." 

(So the "mushroom" had survived the 
storms and heats of another score of years!) 

**. . . Happy, for the most part, are parents who 
have daughters. I rejoice particularly in my uncle's feli- 
city, who has three female descendants from his little 
person who leave him nothing to wish for upon that head. 

" My dear cousin, dejection of spirits, which 1 sup- 
pose may have prevented many a man from becoming 
an author, made me one. I found constant employment 
necessary, and therefore take care to be constantly em- 
ployed. Manual occupations do not engage the mind 
sufficiently, as 1 know by experience, having tried many. 
But composition, especially of verse, absorbs it, wholly. 



i6o William Cowper 

I write, therefore, generally three hours in the morning, 
and in the evening, 1 transcribe. 1 read also, but less 
than I write, for 1 must have bodily exercise, and never 
pass a day without it." 

Lady Hesketh was now a rich woman, 
and made, in her reply to this letter, in- 
quiries as to her recovered relative's finan- 
cial condition, inquiries couched in the 
most tactful, affectionate language, and 
which were answered gratefully. From 
this answer we learn that Mrs. Unwin's 
income doubled that of her adopted son. 
Also, that he had not "grown gray so 
much as that he had grown bald." 

*' No matter! " — the pen rattles on at the 
old boyish rate. 

" There was more hair in the world than ever had the 
honour to belong to me. Accordingly, having found 
just enough to curl a little at my ears, and to intermix 
with a little of my own, that still hangs behind, I appear, 
if you see me in an afternoon, to have a very decent 
head-dress, not easily distinguished from my natural 
growth, which, being worn with a small bag, and a 
black riband about my neck, continues to me the charms 
of my youth, even on the verge of age. 

"P. S. That the view 1 give you of myself may be 
complete, I add the two following items : That 1 am in 
debt to nobody, and that 1 grow fat." 



CHAPTER XIII 

GIFTS FROM " ANONYMOUS" — LADY HESKETH'S 
ARRIVAL IN OLNEY 

NOT more than half-a-dozen letters had 
passed between the cousins after the 
renewal of their correspondence when 
Cowper writes of an anonymous letter he 
had received, full of kind words and en- 
closing a cheque for a handsome sum. 
After long poring over it, and careful com- 
parison of the handwriting and style with 
other manuscripts, he struck upon the sus- 
picion that his uncle Ashley Cowper may 
have been the nameless benefactor, and 
wrote to Lady Hesketh, asking if she were 
not of his opinion. This note of inquiry 
ends with, " Farewell, thou beloved daugh- 
ter of my beloved anonymous uncle." Un- 
fortunately for us. Lady Hesketh's letters 
have not been preserved. Their destruc- 

I6i 



1 62 William Cowper 

tion was an irreparable loss to contempo- 
raneous literature and biography. Her 
reply to this query, of whatever character, 
seems to have disabused Cowper's mind of 
the idea that he had his uncle to thank and 
to love for letter and gift. It did not further 
elucidate the mystery, for in three weeks 
more he wrote: 

"Anonymous is come again. May God bless him, 
whosoever he may be, as I doubt not that He will. 

" A Certain Person said on a certain occasion (and He 
never spake a word that failed) * Whoso giveth you a 
cup of cold water in My name, shall, by no means, lose 
his reward.' Therefore, anonymous as he chooses to 
be upon earth, his name, 1 trust, will hereafter be found 
written in Heaven. But when great princes, or charac- 
ters much superior to great princes, choose to be incog- 
nito it is a sin against decency and good manners to 
seem to know them. I, therefore, know nothing of 
Anonymous but that 1 love him heartily and with most 
abundant cause. Had I opportunity 1 would send you 
his letter, 'though, yourself excepted, 1 would indulge 
none with a sight of it. To confide it to your hands 
will be no violation of the secrecy that he has enjoined 
upon himself and consequently upon me. . . 

" He proceeds to tell me that, being lately in company 
where my last work was mentioned, mention was also 
made of my intended publication.* He informs me of 
the different sentiments of the company on that subject, 

*y^ translation of Homer upon which he was then 
engaged. 



Gifts from "Anonymous" 163 

and expresses his own in terms the most encouraging, but 
adds, that having left the company and shut himself up 
in his chamber, an apprehension seized him lest, perhaps 
the world should not enter into my views of the matter, 
and the work should seem to come short of the success 
that I hope for, the mortification might prove too much 
for my health, yet thinks that, even in that case, I may 
comfort myself by adverting to similar cases of failure 
where the writer's genius would have insured success, if 
anything could have insured it, and alludes in particular 
to the fate and fortune of the Paradise Lost. 

" In the last place he gives his attention to my cir- 
cumstances, takes the kindest notice of their narrowness, 
and makes me a present of an annuity of five hundred 
pounds. In a P. S. he tells me, a small parcel will set 
off by the Wellingborough coach on Tuesday next, 
which he hopes will arrive safe. 

" I have given you the bones, but the benignity and 
affection which is the marrow of those bones, in so 
short an abridgment, I could not give you." 

The mysterious parcel arrived duly, and 
is thus acknowledged: 

" Ohiey,Jan. J/, iy86. 

" It is very pleasant, my dearest cousin, to receive a 
present so delicately conveyed as that which I received 
so lately from Anonymous. But it is also very painful 
to have nobody to thank for it. 

" I find myself, therefore, driven by stress of neces- 
sity, to the following resolution, viz. that I will consti- 
tute you my Thank-receiver-general for whatsoever gift I 
shall receive hereafter, as well as for those that I have 



164 William Cowper 



already received from a nameless benefactor. 1, there- 
fore, thank you, my cousin, for a most elegant present, 
including the most elegant compliment that ever poet 
was honoured with ; for a snuff-box of tortoise-shell, 
with a beautiful landscape on the lid of it, glazed with 
crystal, having the figures of three hares in the foreground, 
and inscribed above with these words, — The Peasant's 
Nest, and below with these, — Tinj^, Puss and Bess. 

" For all and every one of these, I thank you, and, 
also, for standing proxy on this occasion. Nor must 1 
forget to thank you, that so soon after 1 had sent you 
the first letter of Anonymous, 1 received another in the 
same hand. 

"There ! now I am a little easier." 

After the receipt of another letter, with 
the promise of a second token of remem- 
brance to be sent by coach, Cowper writes 
in a graver strain. There is an accent so 
nearly approaching reverence in the fervour 
of his gratitude that one might ahnost sus- 
pect that he had penetrated the secret of 
the disguise contrived between the sisters. 
He stands, with bared and bowed head, 
before the veiled Anonyma, dumb in the 
dawning conception of a love that had borne 
everything and expected nothing. 

" Who is there in the world that has, or thinks he 
has, reason to love me to the degree that he does ? But 
it is no matter. He chooses to be unknown, and his 
choice is, and ever shall be, so sacred to me, that if his 



Gifts from " Anonymous " i6s 

name lay on the table before me, reversed, 1 would not 
turn the paper about that 1 might read it. Much as it 
would gratify me to thank him, I would turn my eyes 
away from the forbidden discovery. I long to assure 
him that these same eyes, concerning which he expresses 
such kind apprehensions, lest they should suffer by this 
laborious undertaking, are as well as 1 could expect them 
to be if I were never to touch either book or pen. . . . 
" 'Though 1 believe you, my dear, to be in full pos- 
session of all this mystery, you shall never know me, 
while you live, either directly, or by hints of any sort, 
to attempt to extort, or steal the secret from you." 

He had at least one good reason for 
suspecting his correspondent's knowledge 
of, if not complicity in, the gracious and 
beautiful mystery. One of the anonymous 
letters referred to a poem, seen in manu- 
script by Lady Hesketh, and by no one 
else, except the author. As it had not 
been published when the letter was written, 
duller wits than Cowper's could have laid 
hold of the clue thus inadvertently cast out. 

*Mt is possible," he wrote, still guardedly and rever- 
ently, "that between you and Anonymous there may 
be some communication. If that should be the case, I 
will beg you just to signify to him, as opportunity may 
occur, the safe arrival of his most acceptable present, 
and my most grateful sense of it." 

After reading all this, we do not need 



1 66 William Cowper 

Southey's deduction to rivet our own con- 
viction : 

*' Who but Theodora could it have been 
who was thus intimate with Lady Hesketh, 
and felt this deep and lively and constant 
regard for Cowper?" 

What Mrs. Unwin thought on the sub- 
ject, — and she had views of her own upon 
all that related to the man who could never 
be her lover or husband, yet was more 
than friend or son, — we are left to conject- 
ure. While the cousins' letters flew back 
and forth, fast and faster, as the project of 
Lady Hesketh's removal to Olney blossomed 
into a certain hope, she ''sits knitting my 
stockings at my elbow, with an industry 
worthy of Penelope herself. You will not 
think this an exaggeration when 1 tell you 
that 1 have not bought a pair these twenty 
years, either of thread, silk or worsted." 

Complete refutation of Lady Austen's 
declaration that Mrs. Unwin's jealousy of 
the poet's intimacy with their charming 
neighbour caused the rupture between 
them, is found in Mrs. Unwin's eager sec- 
onding of Cowper's invitation to his cousin 
to make the third in their home-group. 

"You are the first person for whom 1 



Lady Hesketh's Arrival 167 

have heard Mrs. Unwin express such feel- 
ings as she does for you," Cowper said, 
when preparations for Lady Hesketh's com- 
ing were at their height. 

" She is not profuse in her professions, nor forward to 
enter into treaties of friendship with new faces, but when 
her friendship is once engaged, it may be confided in 
even unto death. She loves you, already, and how 
much more will she love you before this time twelve- 
month ! 1 have, indeed, endeavoured to describe you to 
her, but perfectly as 1 have you by heart, I am sensible 
that my picture cannot do you justice. 1 never saw one 
that did. Be what you may, you are much beloved, 
and will be so at Olney, and Mrs. Unwin expects you 
with the pleasure that one feels at the return of a long 
absent, dear relation ; that is to say, with a pleasure 
such as mine. She sends you her warmest affections." 

The glory of an English May was abroad 
in the country, the season he loved as 
heartily as he hated January. 

"There will be roses, and jasmine and honeysuckles, 
and shady walks, and cool alcoves, and you will partake 
them with us. 1 want you to have a share of every- 
thing that is delightful here, and cannot bear that the 
advance of the season should steal away a single pleasure 
before you can come to enjoy it." 

His letters at this date fairly sparkle with 
the new happiness of communion, after 
long abstinence, with one of his own blood. 



i68 William Cowper 

He dreams of the meeting with his favourite 
kinswoman, dearer than any sister could 
have been — and he had never known a 
sister's love. 

"Sitting in our summer-house, I saw you coming 
towards me. With inexpressible pleasure, I sprang to 
meet you, caught you in my arms, and said: * Oh, my 
precious, precious cousin ! may God make me thankful 
that 1 see thy face again! ' Now, this was a dream, and 
no dream ; it was only a shadow while it lasted, but 
if we both live, and live to meet, it will be realised 
hereafter." 

He had already told her, and reiterated it, 
that he was more than happy in the success 
of his literary ventures. 

" My heart is as light as a bird on the subject of 
Homer. ... To write was necessary for me. I 
undertook an honourable task, and with honourable in- 
tentions. It served me for more than two years as an 
amusement, and as such, was of infinite service to my 
spirits. . . . Fame is neither my meat, nor my 
drink. I livec' fifty years without it, and, should I live 
fifty more, and get to heaven at last, then I shall not 
want it." 

*M am now revising the Iliad. . . . How glad 
shall I be to read it over, in an evening, book by book, 
as fast as 1 settle the copy, to you and to Mrs. Unwin ! 
She has been my touchstone always, and without refer- 
ence to her taste and judgment 1 have printed nothing. 
With one of you at each elbow, 1 should think myself 
the happiest of poets." 



Lady Hesketh's Arrival 169 

After much tribulation in the matter of 
house-hunting, and numberless delays con- 
sequent upon the defection of coachmakers, 
carpenters, and carriers, Lady Hesketh, her 
furniture, her carriage and horses, — a nov- 
elty in the humble neighbourhood, — were 
taken to Olney by the middle of June. 
Cowper's delight in preparing for, and 
awaiting, her coming was tremulous to 
ecstasy, and, as might have been expected, 
was succeeded by depression. 

" My spiiits broke down with me under the pressure 
of too much joy," he wrote to William Unwin, " and 
left me flat, or rather melancholy, throughout the day, 
to a degree that was mortifying to myself, and alarming 
to her. But I have made amends for this failure since, 
and in point of cheerfulness, have far exceeded her ex- 
pectations, for she knew that sable had been my suit 
for years. . . . 

" She has been with us near a fortnight. She pleases 
everybody, and is pleased in her turn, with everything 
she finds at Olney ; is always cheerful and sweet-tem- 
pered, and knows no pleasure equal to that of com- 
municating pleasure to us, and to all around her. This 
disposition in her is the more comfortable, because it is 
not the humour of the day, a sudden flash of benevo- 
lence and good spirits, occasioned merely by a change 
of scene, but it is her natural turn, and has governed all 
her conduct ever since 1 knew her first. We are conse- 
quently happy in her society, and shall be happier still 
to have you to partake with us in our joy. . , . 



1 70 William Cowper 

" I am fond of the sound of bells, but was never 
more pleased with those of Olney than when they rang 
her into her new habitation. It is a compliment that 
our performers upon these instruments have never paid 
to any other personage (Lord Dartmouth excepted) since 
we knew the town. In short, she is, as she ever was, 
my pride and my joy, and I am delighted with every- 
thing that means to do her honour." 

He told the same tale, in a calmer tone, 
to John Newton, when the excitement of 
the arrival had subsided. 

" 1 feel myself well content to say, without any en- 
largement on the subject, that an inquirer after happi- 
ness miglit travel far, and not find a happier trio than 
meet every day either in our parlour, or in the parlour 
at the Vicarage." 

Lady Hesketh had taken the quarters 
vacated by Lady Austen's flitting. My 
fellow-lovers of romance in real life will 
find it easy to forgive me for transcribing 
here two extracts, the last I shall offer, 
from the very few letters of Lady Hesketh 
that have escaped the unfortunate destruc- 
tion lamented awhile ago. Both, I am 
thankful to say, are to her sister Theodora, 
and are strong circumstantial evidence, — if 
it were needed, — that she kept Anonyma 
fully acquainted with every particular of 
her present life. 



Lady HesketlVs Arrival 171 

" I am sure a little variety of company and a little 
cheerful society is necessary to him. Mrs. Unwin seems 
quite to think so, and expresses the greatest satisfaction 
that he has, within the last year, consented to mix a 
little more with human creatures. As to her, she does 
seem, in real truth, to have no will left on earth but for 
his good, and literally no will but his. How she has 
supported (as she has done !) the constant attendance 
day and night which she has gone through for the last 
thirteen years, is to me, 1 confess, incredible. And, in 
justice to her, 1 must say, she does it all with an ease 
that relieves you from any idea of its being a state of 
sufferance. She speaks of him in the highest terms ; 
and by her astonishing management, he is never men- 
tioned in Olney but with the highest respect and 
veneration." 

And again : 

"Our friend delights in a large table and a large 
chair. There are two of the latter comforts in my par- 
lour. 1 am sorry to say that he and 1 always spread 
ourselves out on them, leaving poor Mrs. Unwin to find 
all the comfort she can in a small one, half as high 
again as ours, and considerably harder than marble. 
However, she protests it is ' what she likes ' ; that she 
' prefers a high chair to a low one, and a hard to a soft 
one,' — and I hope she is sincere. Indeed 1 am persuaded 
she is. 

" Her constant employment is knitting stockings, 
which she does with the finest needles 1 ever saw ; — and 
very nice they are, — the stockings, I mean. Our cousin 
has not, for many years, worn other than those of her 
manufacture. She knits silk, cotton, and worsted. 



172 William Cowper 



" She sits knitting on one side of tlie table in her 
spectacles, and he, on the other, reading to her (when 
he is not employed in writing) in his. In winter, his 
morning studies are always carried on in a room by 
himself; but as his evenings are usually spent in the 
winter in transcribing, he, usually, 1 find, does them 
vis-a-vis to Mrs. Unwin. At this time of the year, he 
writes always in the morning in what he calls his 
'boudoir.' This is in the garden ; it has a door and a 
window ; just holds a small table with a desk and two 
chairs ; but 'though there are two chairs, and two per- 
sons might be contained therein, it would be with a de- 
gree of difficulty. For this cause — as I make a point of 
not disturbing a poet in his retreat, — I go not there." 

Both of these extracts were found in the 
parcel of poems and other MSS. treasured 
by Theodora Cowper and published after 
her death in the volume of Poems : Early 
Productions, etc. 




CHAPTER XIV 

MR. NEWTON'S REPROOF OF " WORLDLY GAY- 
ETIES" — REMOVAL TO WESTON LODGE 

IN a letter dated August 5, 1786, Cowper 
wrote to Newton of other and im- 
portant projected changes in the Olney 
household: 

**You have heard of our proposed removaL The 
house that is to receive us is in a state of preparation, 
and when finished, will be smarter and more commodi- 
ous than our present abode. But the circumstance that 
chiefly recommends it is its situation. Long confine- 
ment in the winter, and indeed for the most part in the 
autumn, too, has hurt us both. . . . Had 1 been con- 
fined in the Tower, the battlements would have furnished 
me with a larger space. You say well that there was a 
time when 1 was happy at Olney, and I am now as 
happy at Olney as I expect to be anywhere without the 
presence of God, Change of situation is with me not 
otherwise an object than as both Mrs. Unwin's health 
and mine may happen to be concerned in it. A fever 
of the slow and spirit-oppressing kind seems to belong 

173 



174 William Cowper 



to all except the natives who have dwelt in Olney many 
years, and the natives have putrid fevers. . . . 

" I no more expect happiness at Weston than here, or 
than I should expect it, in company with felons and out- 
laws, in the hold of a ballast-lighter. . . . 

"In the mean time I embrace with alacrity every 
alleviation of my case, and with the more alacrity, be- 
cause whatever proves a relief to my distress, is a cor- 
dial to Mrs. Unwin, whose sympathy with me, through 
the whole of it has been such, that, despair excepted, 
her burden has been as heavy as mine. Lady Hesketh, 
by her affectionate behaviour, the cheerfulness of her 
conversation, and the constant sweetness of her temper, 
has cheered us both ; and Mrs. Unwin not less than 
me. By her help we get change of air and scene, 
though still resident at Olney ; and by her means 
have intercourse with some families in this country, 
with whom, but for her, we could never have been 
acquainted." 

The county families were the Throck- 
mortons of Weston Hall, distant about a 
mile and a half from Olney, and *'the 
Wrightes, the Chesters, and other people 
of position and fashion," who were at- 
tracted to Orchard Side by the growing- 
fame of the author of The Task and Lady 
Hesketh's personal attractions. 

The new house was to be Weston Lodge, 
selected by Lady Hesketh and set in order 
under her supervision, as a more salubrious 



Preparations for Removal 175 

abode for her often-ailing kinsman than 
''the cheerless, prison-like edifice" in the 
village. As Cowper put it in another let- 
ter, "She stoops to Olney, lifts us from 
our swamp, and sets us down on the ele- 
vated ground of Weston Underwood." 

The prospect of the flitting and the so- 
ciety of his cousin wrought marvellous 
changes in his mood. One significant 
token of the improvement was his resump- 
tion, of his own accord, of the habit of 
saying grace at dinner; another, his ac- 
ceptance of invitations to call upon, and 
to dine with, the Throckmortons. The 
thought of living upon the border of 
pleasure-grounds in which he might ram- 
ble in winter as in summer; the sight of 
the noble park outlying the gardens of Wes- 
ton Hall and the Lodge, where he might 
live during the daylight hours, dreaming, 
reading, or writing, as the humour seized 
him, and the roomy cheerfulness of the 
proposed dwelling, a ''mansion" in his 
eyes, were the best tonics the ingenuity of 
affection could have devised. 

Preparations for removal went on apace. 
The "famous parlour" was dismantled, 
and, we may be sure, not without many a 



176 William Cowper 

twinge of regret, and even an occasional 
misgiving. As the visitor of to-day sees 
it, it is a plain, square room of moderate 
size (about thirteen feet from wall to wall). 
Two windows open upon the street, now 
neatly paved, and no longer dismal. One 
looks through them upon the windows of 
the draper's shop visited by Lady Austen 
on the memorable afternoon of Cowper's 
first interview with her. His table and 
chair used to stand before the window 
nearest the fireplace. "I write upon a 
card-table; we breakfast, dine, and sup 
upon a card-table," he wrote to Newton. 
'Mt still holds possession of its function 
without a rival." 

Mr. Wright adds: 

" In this room Cowper read aloud of an evening while 
the ladies plied their crochet-hooks or knitting-needles ; 
here he wrote both letters and poetry ; in this room his 
hares gambolled, his linnets twittered, and his dog 
Mungo defied the thunder and lightning. Here, when 
there was no other means of getting exercise, he and 
Mrs. Unwin played battledoor and shuttlecock, while 
Lady Austen fingered the harpsichord ; here he was told 
the story of John Gilpin ; in this room he read the ballad 
at the breakfast-table." 

Next to the parlour, the most interesting 
spot upon the now-deserted premises is the 



Preparations for Removal 177 

tiny summer-house, in which a man of 
ordinary stature cannot stand erect. It is 
scarcely larger than a sedan-chair; a worm- 
eaten bench fills one side, a window an- 
other, the rickety door a third. A square 
stand, with a drawer in it, is by the win- 
dow, and upon it a grotesque wig-block, 
brown with years, the identical form upon 
which Cowper's wig used to be shaped 
and dressed. In the floor is a trap-door, 
hiding a hole where were kept Mr. Bull's 
pipes and tobacco, ready for his next visit 
to his friend and crony. 

The greenhouse has disappeared, and 
the gate in the wall has been built up, as 
has that in the wall of the Vicarage garden, 
but the walks of both gardens are lined with 
the dear old-fashioned flowers that flour- 
ished here in Newton's and in Cowper's 
day; the boxwood hedge encompassing the 
wee cupboard of a "boudoir" may have 
sprung from roots which occupied the self- 
same space then. The place is redolent with 
memories, and each memory is a romance. 

The happy flurry of getting the ** man- 
sion " ready, and the pleasing pain of unset- 
tling the old home, were rudely interrupted 
by a communication from Mr. Newton. 



1 78 William Cowper 

We get a history of the whole disagreeable 
affair from a letter written to William Un- 
win after the Olneyites had had time to 
view the subject from all sides. 

"This day three weeks your mother received a letter 
from Mr. Newton which she has not answered, nor is 
likely to answer hereafter. It gave us both much con- 
cern, but her more than me ; I suppose my mind being 
necessarily occupied in my work, 1 had not so much 
leisure to browse upon the wormwood that it contained. 
The purport of it is a direct accusation of me, and of 
her an accusation implied, that we have both deviated 
into forbidden paths, and lead a life unbecoming the 
Gospel ; that many of my friends in London are grieved 
and the simple people in Olney astonished ; that he 
never so much doubted of my restoration to Christian 
privileges as now ; in short, that I converse too much 
with people of the world, and find too much pleasure in 
doing so. He concludes with putting your mother in 
mind that there is still an intercourse between London 
and Olney, by which he means to insinuate that we 
cannot offend against the decorum that we are bound to 
observe, but the news of it will most certainly be con- 
veyed to him. . . . We do not at all doubt it. We 
never knew a lie hatched at Olney that waited long for 
a bearer. 

" What are the deeds for which we have been repre- 
sented as thus criminal ? Our present course of life 
differs in nothing from that we have both held these 
thirteen years except that, after great civilities shown us, 
and many advances made on the part of the ' Throcks,' 
we visit them. We visit also at Gayhurst. That we 



Mr. Newton's Reproof 179 

have frequently taken airings with my cousin in her car- 
riage, and that 1 have sometimes taken a walk with her 
on a Sunday evening, and sometimes by myself ; which, 
however, your mother has never done. These are the 
only novelties in our practice ; and, if by these proced- 
ures, so inoffensive in themselves, we yet give offence, 
offence must needs be given. God and our own con- 
sciences acquit us, and we acknowledge no other judges. 

"The two families with whom we have kicked up 
this * astonishing ' intercourse are as harmless in their 
conversation as can be found anywhere. And as to my 
poor cousin, the only crime that she is guilty of against 
the people of Olney is that she has fed the hungry, 
clothed the naked, and administered comfort to the sick. 
Except, indeed, that by her great kindness, she has given 
us a little lift in point of condition and circumstances, 
and has thereby excited envy in some who have not the 
knack of rejoicing in the prosperity of others. And this 
I take to be the root of the matter. 

" My dear William, I do not know that I should have 
tested your nerves and spirits with this disagreeable 
theme, had not Mr. Newton talked of applying to you 
for particulars. . . . You are now qualified to in- 
form him as minutely as we ourselves could, of all our 
enormities." 

Four days afterward, Cowper wrote to 
Newton, and in an altogether different 
tone. The fine breeding of the gentleman, 
and the forbearance of the genuine Christ- 
ian, are conspicuous in every line. There 
is no haste in vindicating himself and his 
fellow-accused from the unjust charge; he 



i8o William Cowper 

does not reproach their mentor for his 
readiness to believe in, and to convict his late 
parishioners of, the worst of the allegations 
i^rought against them. The dignified sad- 
ness of what even Newton must have ac- 
cepted as a more than satisfactory defence 
must have smitten the unjust judge with 
remorse such as should befall one who, 
even unwittingly, has offended one of 
" these little ones." 

After congratulating his correspondent on 
his recent '* agreeable jaunt," and safe re- 
turn to his home and work, and expressing 
his sincere gratification at Mrs. Newton's re- 
covery after a " terrible fall," Cowper goes 
on to speak of Newton's "letter to Mrs. 
Unwin, concerning our conduct, and the 
offence taken at it in our neighbourhood." 

" If any of our serious neighbours have been ' aston- 
ished ' they have been so without the smallest real 
occasion. Poor people are never well employed even 
when they judge one another ; but when they under- 
take to scan the motives and estimate the behaviour of 
those whom Providence has exalted a little above them, 
they are utterly out of their province and their depth. 
They often see us get into Lady Hesketh's carriage, and 
rather uncharitably suppose that it always carries us to 
a scene of dissipation — which it never does. . . ." 

A dozen lines tell to what places and 



Mr. Newton's Reproof i8i 

upon what errands the offensive chariot- 
and-pair conveys the two delinquents, and 
three suffice to dispose of the assertion 
that the Weston and Gayhurst associations 
are hurtful to Christian character and 
influence. 

" It were too hazardous an assertion even for our cen- 
sorious neighbours to make that, because the cause of 
the Gospel does not appear to have been served at 
present, therefore it never can be in any future inter- 
course we may have with them. In the mean time I 
speak a truth, and, as in the sight of God, when I say 
that we are neither of us more addicted to gadding than 
heretofore. We both naturally love seclusion from com- 
pany, and never go into it without putting a force upon 
our disposition ; at the same time I will confess, and 
you will easily conceive, that the melancholy incident to 
such close confinement as we have long endured finds 
itself a little relieved by such amusements as a society so 
innocent affords. . . . 

"We place all the uneasiness that you have felt for 
us upon this subject to the cordial friendship of which 
you have long given us proof. But you may be assured, 
that, notwithstanding all rumours to the contrary, we are 
exactly what we were when you saw us last ; — I, miser- 
able on account of God's departure from me which 1 
believe to be final ; and she seeking His return to me in 
the path of duty, and by continual prayer." 

Lady Hesketh, in nowise daunted by the 
pelting hail of Olney gossip, and the thun- 
der-storm of Mr. Newton's displeasure, 



1 82 William Cowper 

persevered in her missionary labours until 
she saw the pair of friends installed in the 
handsome and convenient residence of 
Weston Underwood, handsome and com- 
modious in this more luxurious age. 

Cowper describes it to one correspond- 
ent with forced moderation as ''comfort- 
able in itself, and my cousin, who has 
spared no expense in dressing it up for us, 
has made it genteel." 

To the wife of his lifelong friend, Joseph 
Hill, he speaks more enthusiastically of the 
orchard opposite the Lodge, which enabled 
them "to look into a wood, or rather to be 
surrounded by one. The village is one of the 
prettiest I know ; terminated at one end by 
the church tower, seen through the trees, 
and at the other, by a very handsome gate- 
way, opening into a fine grove of elms." 

Lady Hesketh left them for London the 
middle of November. In a letter of the 
26th Cowper sings the praises of his '' man- 
sion " in a strain that must have delighted 
her generous heart. The parlour was 
** even elegant," the study 

" on the other side of the hall neat, warm, and silent, 
and a much better study than 1 deserve if 1 do not pro- 
duce in it an incomparable edition of Homer. 



Removal to Weston Lodge 183 

" I think every day of those lines of Milton, and con- 
gratulate myself upon having obtained, before I am 
quite superannuated, what he seems not to have hoped 
for sooner : 

" ' And may at length my weary age 
Find out the peaceful hermitage.' 

. . . You must always understand, my dear, that 
when poets talk of cottages, hermitages, and such like 
things, they mean a house with six sashes in front, two 
comfortable parlours, a smart staircase, and three bed- 
rooms of convenient dimensions. In short, such a house 
as this." 

The benevolent fairy's good offices did 
not cease with the change from "the old 
prison and its precincts " to airy Weston 
Underwood, with its orchard in front and 
great gardens in the rear, and its outlook 
over three parishes to the undulating line 
of blue hills twenty miles away. Without 
consulting either of the inmates of the new 
home, she added twenty pounds a year to 
their income from her own purse, secured 
double the amount from a titled relative, 
and ten pounds from a son of the poet's 
early friend, Major Cowper. 

One day in December, Cowper extended 
his afternoon walk to Olney and Orchard 
Side. The house was still tenantless, and 



1 84 William Cowper 

he entered to be chilled and saddened to 
the heart by the squalid loneliness of par- 
lour and bedrooms. 

"Never did I see so forlorn and woeful 
a spectacle. Deserted of its inhabitants, it 
seemed as if it could never be dwelt in for- 
ever. The coldness of it, the dreariness 
and the dirt, made me think it no inapt re- 
semblance of a soul that God has forsaken." 

Always harking back to the haunting 
horror lurking at the bottom of his soul ! 

This was written to Newton. Was the 
dreary imagery a more gracious sign in the 
stern pastor's sight than the tale of drives 
between hedge-rows, and Sunday after- 
noon strolls along the winding Ouse, and 
social evenings in the fine library of Wes- 
ton Hall.^ "The human mind is a great 
mystery," says another letter to the same 
spiritual guide. We adopt the words in a 
different sense, and with an application 
of which the uncompromising Greatheart 
never dreamed. 



CHAPTER XV 

DEATH OF WILLIAM UNWIN — HOMER AND HARD 
WORK — GATHERING CLOUDS 

WILLIAM UNWIN paid a visit of sev- 
eral days to Orchard Side in Au- 
gust, 1786. He was never in better health 
and spirits, and he was always the life of 
the quiet house while there. Cowper had 
no dearer friend, and his mother's heart 
took continual delight in the rare moral, 
mental, and spiritual gifts of her only son. 

On the day after his departure to his own 
home, whilst the poet, Mrs. Unwin, and 
Lady Hesketh were seated quietly together, 
this last made the remark, ''Now, we 
want Mr. Unwin !" her reason, Cowper 
observes, for saying so, being that they had 
spent near half an hour together without 
laughing — an interval of gravity that seldom 
occurred when Mr. Unwin was present. 

185 



i86 William Cowper 

To his fund of natural animal spirits and 
keen sense of humour, young Unwin joined 
great sweetness of disposition, and abound- 
ing charity of judgment that made his wit 
stingless and his presence a benediction to 
all who knew him. 

In one of the latest letters Cowper wrote 
to him, he calls him 

" my mahogany box, with a slit in the lid of it, to 
which I commit my productions of the lyric kind, in 
perfect confidence that they are safe and will go no fur- 
ther. ... If you approve my Latin, and your 
wife and sister my English, this, together with the ap- 
probation of your mother, is fame enough for me." 

Lady Hesketh eagerly embraced the op- 
portunity of engaging William Unwin as a 
tutor for her son, a lad about twelve years 
of age, and was on the point of placing the 
little Hesketh in the family of his future 
guardian when the young man fell a victim 
to a brief, violent attack of putrid fever. 
The sad event occurred on November 29th, 
before Cowper and Mrs. Unwin were fairly 
settled in Weston Underwood. 

"There never was a moment in Unwin's life when 
there seemed to be more urgent need of him than the 
moment in which he died," wrote Cowper to Lady 



Death of William Unwin 187 

Hesketh. And to John Newton ;— " I cannot think of 
the widow and chikiren that he has left without a heart- 
ache that I remember not to have felt before. . . . 
Mrs. Unwin begs me to give her love to you, with 
thanks for your kind letter. Hers has been so much a 
life of affliction that, whatever occurs to her in that 
shape has not, at least, the terrors of novelty to embitter 
it. She is supported under this, as she has been under 
a thousand others, with a submission of which I never 
saw her deprived for a moment." 

In these and in other letters of this date, 
he evidently put deliberate force upon the 
expression of his afflictions. As we read 
them the image rises again and again before 
us of a man fighting away from an en- 
croaching dread, pushing back with both 
hands a grisly Thing, from the sight of 
which he averts his face and closes his eyes. 
He welcomes visitors as earnestly as he 
had formerly shunned them; Mrs. Throck- 
morton, who had offered to be "my lady 
of the ink-bottle this winter," spent many 
forenoons in his study, copying his MSS. 
after he had polished and recast them to 
his mind; Mrs. Unwin put aside her own 
grief to act as his amanuensis when no 
other was at hand ; he accepted the homage 
of a young artist who knew most of his 
published poems by heart, had him to tea, 



i88 William Cowper 

once and again, and exchanged "spick- 
and-span new verses " with him for really 
clever drawings from the artist's pencil. 
The Throckmortons were Roman Catholics, 
a circumstance that had no inconsiderable 
weight in Mr. Newton's disapproval of his 
late parishioner's altered manner of life. 

Cowper tells Lady Hesketh, late in 
December, that 

"the good Padre shall positively dine here next week, 
whether he will or not. I do not at all suspect that his 
kindness to Protestants has anything insidious in it 
any more than 1 suspect that he transcribes Homer for 
me with a view to my conversion. He would find me a 
tough piece of business, I can tell him ; for when 1 had 
no religion at all, I had yet a terrible dread of the Pope. 
How much more now ! 1 should have sent you a longer 
letter, but was obliged to devote last evening to the 
melancholy employment of composing a Latin inscription 
for the tombstone of poor William. . . . 

" Homer stands by me, biting his thumbs, and swears 
that, if I do not leave off directly, he will choke me 
with bristly Greek that shall stick in my throat forever." 

Echoes from those who were praising 
the rising poet afar off reached his "her- 
mitage." A third edition of his work was 
in print, and the post brought him daily 
tributes, printed and epistolary, from ad- 



Homer and Hard Work 189 

mirers who only lacked encouragement to 
become devotees: 

" A lady unknown addresses the ' best of men ' ; , . . 
an unknown gentleman has read my 'inimitable poems' 
and invites me to his seat in Hampshire ; another incog- 
nito gives me hopes of a memorial in his garden, and a 
Welsh attorney sends me his verses to revise, and oblig- 
ingly asks — 

" ' Say, shall my little bark attendant sail, 
Pursue the triumph and partake the gale ? ' 

I could pity the poor woman who has been weak 
enough to claim my song. Such pilferings are sure to be 
detected. I wrote it, 1 suppose, four years ago. The 
Rose in question was a Rose given to Lady Austen by 
Mrs. Unwin, and the incident that suggested the subject 
occurred in the room in which you slept at the Vicarage, 
which Lady Austen made her dining-room." 

Reference is here made to verses often 
attributed to Mrs. Barbauld and of slight 
poetic merit, if, indeed, they possess any : 

" The rose had been washed, just washed in a shower. 
Which Mary to Anna conveyed ; 
The plentiful moisture encumbered the flower, 
And weighed down its beautiful head." 

He wrought diligently upon Homer up 
to the middle of January, 1787, — the month 
which he had imagined was fraught with 



190 William Cowper 

peculiar dangers for him, ever since the 
January of 1773, when he succumbed to 
the Olney lunacy. Upon the 13th he 
wrote to Mr. Newton an apology for spend- 
ing so much time upon a translation in- 
stead of upon original poetry. He was 

" hunted into the business by extreme distress of spirits, 
and had found a sort of jejune consolation in it. 

" Let my friends, therefore, who wish me some little 
measure of tranquillity in the performance of the most 
turbulent voyage that ever Christian mariner made, be 
contented that, having Homer's mountains and forests 
to windward, I escape, under this shelter, from the force 
of many a gust that would almost overset me. As to 
fame, and honour, and glory that may be acquired by 
poetical feats of any sort, God knows, that if 1 could 
lay me down in a grave with hope at my side, or sit 
with hope at my side in a dungeon all the residue of my 
days, 1 would cheerfully wave them all." 

The letter closes with an incidental allu- 
sion to his " experience of thirteen years of 
misery," the length of time that had elapsed 
since he had the Fatal Dream. The anni- 
versary of this visitation was close upon 
him when he penned a disquisition upon 
dreams as portents, or means of instruction 
or admonition, apropos of the case of a 
Mrs. Carter, cited by Lady Hesketh. After 
pointing out to his cousin that ** God in old 



Gathering Clouds 191 

time spoke by dreams," he concludes: 
''The same need that there ever was for 
His interference in this way there is still, 
and ever must be, while man continues 
blind and fallible, and a creature beset with 
dangers which he can neither foresee, nor 
obviate." 

The constrained calmness of which 1 
spoke just now is most marked in a note 
which follows upon the mention of a week 
of fever and sleeplessness that had obliged 
him to intermit his work of translation. 

" Homer's battles cannot be fought by a man who 
does not sleep well, and who has not some degree of 
animation in the day-time. — 1 walk constantly, that is 
to say, Mrs. Unwin and 1 together ; for at these times 1 
keep her continually employed, and never suffer her to 
be absent from me many minutes. She gives me all her 
time, and all her attention, and forgets there is another 
object in the world." 

She sent for Dr. Grindon, an Olney sur- 
geon, the day on which this letter was 
written (January i8, 1787), and he left a 
phial containing two ounces of tincture of 
valerian, then esteemed a sovereign remedy 
for nervousness and insomnia. 

On or about the dreaded 24th, Cowper 
hanged himself in the study he had extolled 



192 William Cowper 

as "neat, warm, and silent." Mrs. Unwin 
entered just in time to cut him down. A 
second attempt at suicide was frustrated 
by Mr. Bull's providential appearance upon 
the scene. 

After this interposition Cowper saw no- 
body but Mrs. Unwin for six months. The 
dark spirit was in full possession of the 
long-racked mind. The manful fight had 
ended in utter defeat. 

He was apparently well and sane for be- 
tween two and three months, before he re- 
opened communication with Mr. Newton. 
In the earlier part of his letter he confides 
to his friend that he had been for thirteen 
years under an odd delusion respecting his 
(Newton's) identity. 

'* The acquisition of light, — if light it may be called 
which leaves me as much in the dark as ever on the 
most interesting subjects — releases me, however, from 
the disagreeable suspicion that I am addressing myself to 
you as the friend whom I loved and valued in my better 
days, when, in fact, you are not that friend, but a 
stranger. . . . You will tell me, no doubt, that the 
knowledge I have gained is an earnest of more and more 
valuable information, and that the dispersion of the 
clouds, in part, promises, in due time, their complete 
dispersion. I should be happy to believe it, but the 
power to do so is at present far from me. Never was 



Gathering Clouds ig} 

the mind ol man benighted to the degree that mine has 
been. The storms that have assailed me would have 
overthrown the faith of every man that ever had any, 
and the very remembrance of them, even after they have 
long passed by, makes hope impossible. 

" Mrs. Unwin, whose poor bark is still held together, 
'though shattered by being tossed and agitated so long 
at the side of mine, does not forget yours and Mrs. New- 
ton's kindness on this last occasion. Mrs. Newton's 
offer to come to her assistance, and your readiness to 
have rendered us the same service, could you have hoped 
for any salutary effect of your presence, neither Mrs. 
Unwin nor myself undervalue, nor shall presently forget. 
But you judged right when you supposed that even your 
company would have been no relief to me : the com- 
pany of my father or my brother, could they have 
returned from the dead to visit me, would have been 
none to me. . . . 

" This last tempest has left my nerves in a worse con- 
dition than it found them ; my head especially, 'though 
better informed, is more infirm than ever." 

A glimpse of the remedial measures re- 
sorted to a century ago for the cure of a 
mind diseased, and the elimination of a 
rooted imaginary sorrow, is afforded in 
another letter to Lady Hesketh : 

" Those jarrings that made my head feel like a broken 
egg-shell, and those twirls that I spoke of have been re- 
moved by an infusion of the bark which 1 have of late 
constantly applied to. 1 was flooded, indeed, but to 
no purpose, for the whole complaint was owing to relax- 



194 



William Cowper 



ation. But the apothecary recommended phlebotomy 
in order to ascertain that matter, wisely suggesting that 
if I found no relief from bleeding it would be a sufficient 
proof that weakness must necessarily be the cause." (!) 




CHAPTER XVI 

SIX PEACEFUL, BUSY YEARS — MRS. UNWIN'S ILL- 
NESS — SAMUEL TEEDON — VISIT TO EARTHAM 

COWPER'S sudden, and apparently 
complete, recovery from what he 
used to speak of, in connection with "the 
dreadful seventy-three," as *'the more 
dreadful eighty-six," was succeeded by six 
years of almost perfect mental health and 
what approximated tranquillity. 

He was no longer a shy recluse. The 
last visitor whom he received before his ill- 
ness was Samuel Rose, a young English- 
man and a warm admirer of his poems, and 
to him was addressed the first letter written 
after he emerged from the darkness. " A 
valuable young man, who, attracted by the 
effluvia of my genius, found me out in my 
retirement last January twelvemonth," he 
writes playfully to Lady Hesketh in 1788. 

195 



196 William Cowper 

**I have not permitted him to be idle, but 
have made him transcribe for me the twelfth 
book of the Iliad." 

The kindness of the Throckmortons be- 
guiled him into visiting them frequently 
and into inviting them to frequent the 
Lodge in their turn. 

it was of this halcyon period that it was 
written: "The great charm of the social 
gatherings at Weston Hall was the table- 
talk, to which, of course, Cowper was the 
chief contributor." 

Another authority confirms what seems 
to us to need confirmation when we carry 
in mind our preconceived picture of the 
reserved, diffident student, avoiding the 
face of his fellow-man and selecting his 
pew in the gallery of the Olney church, 
where he could neither see the preacher, 
nor be seen by him : 

" It was not so much what Cowper said, as the way 
he said it — his manner of relating an ordinary incident — 
which charmed his auditory, or convulsed them with 
merriment. Moreover, they knew that something de- 
lightful was coming before it came. His eyes would 
suddenly kindle and all his face become lighted up with 
the fun of the story before he opened his mouth to speak. 
At last he began to relate some ludicrous incident, which 
'though you had yourself witnessed it, you had failed to 



Six Peaceful Years 197 

recognise as mirthful. A bull had frightened him, and 
caused him to clear a hedge with undue precipitation. 
His ' shorts ' became seriously lacerated, and the conster- 
nation with which their modest occupant had effected 
his retreat home — holding his garment together in order 
that his calamity might escape detection — was made 
extravagantly diverting." 

He wrote a mock-heroic poem upon this 
same bull, rhyming letters and riddles to 
London friends, read and answered epistles 
from unknown readers of his popular books, 
received presents from, and welcomed to 
the hermitage, new acquaintances like Mrs. 
King, a clergyman's wife, who had been a 
friend of John Cowper, and opened a corre- 
spondence with his brother, after reading 
The Task, etc. 

We borrow from Samuel Rose's letter to 
his sister a pleasing sketch of the daily liv- 
ing at Weston Underwood from 1787 to 
1789: 

" Here 1 found Lady Hesketh, a very agreeable, good- 
tempered woman, polite without ceremony, and suffi- 
ciently well-bred to make others happy in her company. 
1 here feel no restraint, and none is wished to be inspired. 
We rise at whatever hour we choose ; breakfast at half- 
after nine, take about an hour to satisfy the sentiment, 
not the appetite — for we talk, — good heaven ! how we 



198 William Cowper 

talk ! and enjoy ourselves most wonderfully. Then we 
separate, and dispose of ourselves as our different inclin- 
ations point. Mr. Cowper to Homer, Mr. Rose to 
transcribing what is already translated, Lady Hesketh to 
work and to books alternately, and Mrs. Unwin who, 
in everything but her face is a kind angel sent from 
heaven to guard the health of our poet — is busy in 
domestic concerns. At one, our labours finished, the 
poet and I walk for two hours. I, then, drink most 
plentiful draughts of instruction which flow from his lips, 
instruction so sweet, and goodness so exquisite that one 
loves it for its flavour. At three we return and dress, 
and the succeeding hour brings dinner upon the table, 
and collects again the smiling countenances of the family 
to partake of the neat and elegant meal. Conversation 
continues until tea-time, when an entertaining volume 
engrosses our thoughts until the last meal is announced. 
Conversation again, and to rest before twelve, to enable 
us to rise again to the same round of innocent pleasure." 

The Iliad was finished September 2}, 1 788. 
On September 24, Cowper began the trans- 
lation of the Odyssev. The continued strain 
had begun to be felt by him, eager though 
he seemed to plunge into the new enterprise. 

He confesses, October 30: " Let me once 
get well out of these long stories, and if 1 
ever meddle with such matters more, call 
me, as Fluellen says, — 'a fool and an ass, 
and a prating coxcomb.' " 

December 20, found the Iliad receivinor 



Mrs. Unwin's Illness 199 

its last polish, the Odyssey "advanced in a 
rough state to the ninth book." 

'*My friends are some of them in haste 
to see the work printed, and my answer to 
them is — ' 1 do nothing else, and this I do, 
day and night. It must in time be finished." 

Two Januaries had passed without calam- 
ity. As if a malicious fate were bent upon 
keeping alive superstitious dreads of the 
month and especially of the neighbourhood 
of the awful twenty-fourth day, Mrs. Un- 
win narrowly escaped death by fire on the 
twenty-first of January, 1788. Her night- 
clothes took fire from the snuff of a candle 
she thought she had extinguished, and but 
for her presence of mind in gathering up 
her blazing skirts and plunging them into 
water, she must have been burned to death 
before help could reach her. 

Upon January 29, 1789, Cowper writes 
to Mrs. King of another and more serious 
mishap: 

" I have more items than one by which to remember 
the late frost. It has cost me the bitterest uneasiness. 
Mrs. Unwin got a fall on the gravel-walk covered with 
ice, which has confined her to an upper chamber ever 
since. She neither broke, nor dislocated any bones, but 
received such a contusion below the hip as crippled her 



200 William Cowper 

completely. She now begins to recover after having 
been as helpless as a child for a whole fortnight, but so 
slowly at present that her amendment is, even now, 
almost imperceptible." 

Mr. Wright gives an extract pertinent to 
this accident from one of the many unpub- 
lished Cowper letters he has rescued from 
oblivion. The date is January 19, the day 
of Mrs. Un win's fall: 

" I have been so many years accustomed 
either to feel trouble or to expect it, that 
habit has endued me with that sort of forti- 
tude which 1 remember my old schoolmas- 
ter, Dr. Nicholl, used to call the passive 
valour of an ass." 

This especial trouble was the beginning 
of the end for her whose sublimity of self- 
devotion to her hapless charge strikes us 
dumb with wondering reverence. In many 
of the letters written by Cowper that year 
he alludes to her slow recovery of health 
and activity. 

He writes to Newton, December i, 1789, 
that 

" Mrs. Unwin's case is, at present, my only subject 
of uneasiness that is not immediately personal, and 
properly my own. She has almost constant headaches; 
almost a constant pain in her side, which nobody under- 



Mrs. UnwiiVs Illness 201 

stands, and lier lameness, within the last year, is very 
little amended." 

During the next January (1790) he says, 
— also to Mr. Newton : 

"Twice has that month returned upon 
me, accompanied by such horrors as I have 
no reason to suppose ever made part of the 
experience of any other man. 1 accordingly 
look forward to it with a dread not to be 
imagined." 

Again the dreaded season passed without 
notable casualty, and the February anniver- 
sary of the Fatal Dream. Instead of sorrow, 
the latter month brought him the gift of 
his mother's picture, to which we owe the 
most exquisite lyric to which his pen ever 
gave birth, and one of the most beautiful 
and touching in any language. 

'M had rather possess it than the richest 
jewel in the British crown," he breaks 
forth to Lady Hesketh in describing his 
treasure. ''I remember her, young as 1 
was when she died, well enough to know 
that it is a very exact resemblance of her, 
and as such to me it is invaluable." 

To his cousin and early playfellow, the 
donor, he speaks yet more passionately : 



202 William Cowper 

" I received it with a trepidation of nerves and spirits 
somewhat akin to what 1 should have felt had the dear 
original presented herself to my embraces. I kissed it 
and hung it where it is the last object that I see at night, 
and, of course, the first on which I open my eyes in the 
morning." 

Of the poem, ''written not without 
tears," he says he had more pleasure in 
writing it than any other that he had ever 
produced, one excepted. 

" That one was addressed to a lady whom I expect in 
a few minutes to come down to breakfast, and who has 
supplied to me the place of my own mother — my own 
invaluable mother ! these six-and-twenty years. Some 
sons may be said to have had many fathers, but a 
plurality of mothers is not common." 

The sonnet here referred to was that 
beginning — 

" Mary ! I want a lyre with other strings, 
Such aid from heaven as some have feigned they drew, 
An eloquence scarce given to mortals, new 
And undebased by praise of meaner things." 

Mrs. Unwin had so far recovered her 
spirits, if not her strength, as to be able to 
communicate an important, and evidently 
to her an exciting, bit of literary news to 
Cowper's cousin, Mrs. Balls, October 25, 
1791. 



Literary Projects 201 

The translations of the Iliad and the 
Odyssey, although little known and less 
cared for by the readers and critics of our 
generation, were most favourably received 
by the public of the seventeen-nineties, and 
cleared a thousand pounds for the author, 
besides earning him a gratifying access of 
fame. Reactionary depression was sure to 
follow his long-sustained labour and the ex- 
citement of successful publication. What 
to turn his hand to next was a vexed ques- 
tion. He needed rest and relaxation, yet 
was keenly alive to the dangers of intro- 
spective indolence. 

" Many different plans and projects are recommended 
to me," he says. ''Some call aloud for original verse, 
others for more translation, and others for other things. 
Providence, 1 hope, will direct me in my choice, for 
other guide I have none, nor wish for another." 

What Mrs. Unwin hailed as a plain indi- 
cation of the Divine will shortly presented 
itself : 

" Ever since the close of his translation," she wrote to 
Mrs. Balls, " 1 have had many anxious thoughts how 
he would spend the advancing winter. Had he followed 
either of the three professions in his earlier days, he 
might have been not only laying the foundation, but 
also raising the fabric of a distinguished character, and 



204 William Cowper 

have spent the remaining portion of his life in endeav- 
ouring to maintain it. But the lite of a mere gentle- 
man very few, or any, are equal to support with credit 
to themselves, or comfort to their friends. But a gra- 
cious Providence has dissipated my fears on that head. 
After a warm and strong solicitation he has been pre- 
vailed upon to stand forth as an editor of the most 
splendid and magnificent edition of Milton that was ever 
offered to the public. His engagement is to translate all 
the Latin and Italian poems, to select the most ap- 
proved notes of his predecessors in that line, and add 
elucidations and annotations on the text as he sees 
proper. Fuseli is to furnish paintings for the thirty 
copper-plates, and Johnson, the bookseller, has taken 
upon himself to provide the first artists for engraving. 
This work will take your cousin, upon his own compu- 
tation, about two years." 

A singular complication of what the 
toiler named "the Miltonic Trap" was the 
influence of Samuel Teedon, an Olney 
schoolmaster, upon Cowper's decision. 
Without being illiterate, Teedon was nar- 
row of intellect, provincial, and a fanatic. 
While his neighbour in Olney, Cowper had 
amused himself with the pedagogue's fan- 
tasies and overweening self-conceit. He 
enjoyed "stuffing" him upon one of his 
many visits, at another "felt the sweat 
gush out upon his forehead " at Teedon's 
tactless flattery of himself (Cowper). By 



Samuel Teedon 205 

degrees, and by ways we cannot compre- 
hend, both Mrs. Unwin and Cowper began 
to have confidence in Teedon's oracles — 
viz., his intuitions, especial answers to 
prayer, and even direct revelations from 
Heaven in voices and visions. 

" No suspicion of knavery attaches to him, for he was 
a simple-hearted creature," says Southey. " As they" 
— Mrs. Unwin and the poet — " would have him to be a 
sort of high priest i)icog. such he fancied himself to 
be, and consulted his internal Urim and Thummim with 
happy and untroubled confidence." 

We cannot escape the suspicion that Mrs. 
Unwin's excellent sense and clear judg- 
ment were yielding to the terrible pressure 
laid upon her through six-and-twenty years, 
now that her tlrm health was no longer the 
ally of her brain and nerves, — when we 
read that "the earliest notice of these piti- 
able consultations relates to the proposed 
edition of Milton." It runs thus: 

"Mrs. Unwin thanks Mr. Teedon for his letters, and 
is glad to find the Lord gives him so great encouragement 
to proceed by shining on his addresses and quickening 
him by His word. Mrs. Unwin acknowledges the 
Lord's goodness, which is mixed with the many and 
various trials He sees fit to visit his servants with." 

A week later: 



2o6 William Cowper 

"Mrs. Unwin has the satisfaction of informing Mr. 
Teedon that Mr. Cowper is tranquil this morning, and 
that, with this which Mr. Teedon receives, a letter by 
the post, decisive of his undertaking the important busi- 
ness, will go by the same messenger. . . . Mr. Cowper 
and Mrs. Unwin are agreed that it was hardly possible 
to find out a reference to the great point in Mr. Teedon's 
first letter. His second favour elucidated the whole, 
and removed all doubts. They hope Mr. Teedon will 
continue to help them with his prayers on this occasion." 

Mr. Wright supplies the key to these 
notes : 

" When the question arose whether or not he should 
undertake the editorship of Milton, it was Teedon that 
Cowper consulted, and Teedon, after much prayer, 
obtained from Heaven that it was certainly expedient 
that the poet should engage in the work. Cowper's 
doubts now vanished." 

The important undertaking was well un- 
der way in November, 1791. One day in 
December, as Mrs. Unwin sat by the fire- 
side, and Cowper toiled at his desk in the 
cozy study at Weston Underwood, she 
called out faintly, ''Oh, Mr. Cowper! 
don't let me fall ! " 

He sprang to her side in time to catch 
her as she fell forward. 

" For some moments," he relates to Mrs, King (Janu- 
ary 26, 1792), "her knees and ankles were so entirely 
disabled that she had no use of them, and it was with 



Visit from William Hayley 207 

the exertion of all my strength that I replaced her in her 
seat. Many days she kept her bed, and for some weeks 
her chamber, but at length, has joined me in my study. 
Her recovery has been extremely slow, and she is still 
feeble, but, 1 thank God, not so feeble but that I hope 
for her perfect restoration in the spring." 

In March the same correspondent is told: 
"Mrs. Unwin, I thank God, is better, 
but still wants much of complete restora- 
tion. We have reached a time of life when 
heavy blows, if not fatal, are at least long 
felt." 

In May, a pleasure Cowper had long an- 
ticipated with eagerness was granted to 
him, — a visit from William Hayley, the 
poet, translator, and essayist, whose Life 
of William Cowper testifies to the justice 
of his appreciation of his friend, the rich- 
ness and delicacy of his imagination, and 
the sterling qualities of a friendship of which 
Cowper had written to him before their 
meeting: *'God grant that this friendship 
of ours may be a comfort to us all the 
rest of our days, in a world where true 
friendships are rare, and especially where, 
suddenly formed, they are apt soon to ter- 
minate." 

During Hayley's stay at Weston Lodge, 



2o8 William Cowper 

Mrs. Unwin had a paralytic stroke, and 
remained alarmingly ill for several hours. 
Relieved partially and beyond the expecta- 
tions of her friends, she yet remained a 
confirmed invalid. 

July 9, 1792, saw an appeal for time sent 
to Johnston, the publisher: 

" It is not possible for me to do anything that demands 
study and attention in the present state of our family. 
I am the electrician ; I am the escort into the garden ; 1 
am wanted, in short, on a hundred little occasions that 
occur every day in Mrs. Unwin's present state of infirm- 
ity. . . . The time fixed in your proposals for pub- 
lication meanwhile steals on, and 1 have lately felt my 
engagement for Milton bear upon my spirits with a pres- 
sure which, added to the pressure of some other private 
concerns, is almost more than they are equal to." 

In August, moved rather by the hope that 
the change might benefit Mrs. Unwin than 
by the hope of any enjoyment he might 
himself draw from the expedition, Cowper 
accepted Hayley's urgent invitation to his 
beautiful country home, called by Gibbon 
**the little Paradise of Eartham." 

The journey was made by carriage and 
occupied nearly three days; the scenery of 
Sussex through which they drove was 
superb to the eyes of the two Lowlanders; 
they were received with affectionate hospi- 



Samuel Teedon's Influence 2oq 

tality in what Cowper says was '' the most 
elegant mansion he ever inhabited," and 
were made *'as happy as it was in the 
power of terrestrial good to make us." 

The jarring tone in an otherwise charm- 
ing tale is a paragraph in a letter to Samuel 
Teedon, the first written after their arrival : 

" I had one glimpse — at least, I was willing to hope 
it was a glimpse — of heavenly light by the way, an 
answer, 1 suppose, to many fervent prayers of yours. 
Continue to pray for us, and when anything occurs 
worth communicating, let us know. . . , 

" 1 am yours with many thanks for all your spiritual 
aids." 

Teedon wrote one hundred and twenty- 
six letters to Cowper, who, in the school- 
master's lately discovered Diary, is styled 
''the squire," and sixty to " Madam " — his 
title for Mrs. Unwin — in the interval divid- 
ing August, 1 79 1 , from February, 1 794. The 
parasite who developed into the teacher 
paid the grateful twain ninety-two visits in 
the same time. These are likewise recorded 
in his diary, the queer production of a 
queerer man, but one who was, in his own 
opinion as in that of his infinitely better- 
bred and -educated disciples, the peculiar 
favourite of Heaven, 



CHAPTER XVII 

HOMER — "MY MARY ! " — FAMILIAR DEMON — 
MRS. UNWIN'S death — THE END 

THE delights of the Eartham visit were 
succeeded after the return to Weston 
by a brief season of depression in Mrs. Un- 
win's physical state, and by a menace of 
what Cowper notes, as " my old disorder 
— nervous fever." 

"At present" (October i8, the date of 
a letter to John Newton) 

" I am tolerably free from it, — a blessing for which I 
believe myself partly indebted to the use of James's 
powders taken in small quantities, and partly to a small 
quantity of laudanum taken every night, but chiefly to 
a manifestation of God's presence vouchsafed to me a 
few days since, transient, indeed, and dimly seen, 
through a mist of many fears and troubles, but sufficient 
to convince me, at least while the enemy's power is a 
little restrained, that He has not cast me off forever." 

The "manifestation" is more minutely 



Homer 211 

described in a letter to tlie invariable Tee- 
don: 

**0n Sunday, while 1 walked with Mrs. 
Unwin and my cousin in the orchard, it 
pleased God to enable me once more to ap- 
proach Him in prayer, and I prayed silently 
for everything that lay nearest my heart 
with a considerable degree of liberty." 

A few days thereafter he declares his 
purpose " to continue such prayer as 1 can 
make." 

To Hayley he wrote at the same time: 
'M am a pitiful beast, and in the texture of 
my mind and natural temper, have three 
threads of despondency to one of hope." 

While these subterranean fires smoul- 
dered, he played the man in a gallant effort 
to go on with the Miltonic engagement, 
and allowed himself no relief from the 
drudgery other than he found in " playing 
push-pin with Homer," — i.e., revising and 
annotating a second edition of his transla- 
tion of the f/iad. His eyes began to trouble 
him early in 1793, yet we find him, in No- 
vember of that year, rising before day, 
" while the owls are still hooting, to pursue 
my accustomed labours in the mine of 
Homer." 



212 William Cowper 

The year had been busy, but uneventful 
save for the slow, ceaseless burning of the 
hidden fires, and the record of their varia- 
tions in the letters to the Olney seer. The 
poet's list of friends and worshippers had 
grown steadily, and his gracious courtesy 
to one and all showed the thoroughbred, 
as the tenderness of his inimitable letters, 
and the play of humour which he knew 
would please his correspondents, illustrated 
his kindness of heart. 

In one of the last letters he ever wrote to 
Teedon, he makes griefful note of the old 
** nervous fever," a malady his friends knew 
well enough by this time to dread above all 
other ailments : 

" In this state of mind, how can I write? It is in 
vain to attempt it. I have neither spirits for it, as I 
have often said, nor leisure. Yet vain as 1 know the 
attempt must prove, 1 purpose in a few days to renew it. 

" Mrs. Unwin is as well as when 1 wrote last, but, 
like myself, dejected. Dejected both on my account 
and on her own. Unable to amuse herself with work 
or reading, she looks forward to a new day with de- 
spondence, weary of it before it begins, and longing for 
the return of night." 

When he renewed his literary work it 
was to tell the same story more at length 
and in language that has wrung thousands 



'' My Mary ! " 213 

of hearts with sympathetic sorrow. The 
lines To Mary stand next to the incom- 
parable tribute to his mother, in pathos, 
beauty, and heart-break : 

The twentieth year is well-nigh past, 
Since first our sky was overcast, 
Ah, would that this might be the last ! 
My Mary ! 

Thy spirits have a fainter flow, 
I see thee daily weaker grow — 
'Twas my distress that brought thee low, 
My Mary ! 

Thy needles, once a shining store, 
For my sake, restless heretofore, 
Now rest disused and shine no more, 
My Mary ! 

For, though thou gladly wouldst fulfil 
The same kind office for me still, 
Thy sight now seconds not thy will, 
My Mary ! 

And still to love, 'though prest with ill, 
In wintry age to feel no chill, 
With me is to be lovely still, 

My Mary ! 

But ah ! by constant heed 1 know 
How oft the sadness that 1 show 
Transforms thy smiles to looks of woe, 
My Mary ! 



214 William Cowper 

And should my future lot be cast 
With much resemblance to the Past — 
Thy worn-out heart will break at last, 
My Mary ! 

Alarmed by the reports of the melancholy 
changes in the home she had set up at 
Weston Underwood under such auspicious 
circumstances, Lady Hesketh paid a visit 
to her cousin, choosing, at his suggestion, 
the beginning of winter, and planning to 
remain over the fateful month of January. 

"I found," she writes, "this dear soul the absolute 
nurse of this poor lady who cannot move out of her chair 
without help, nor walk across the room unless supported 
by two people. Added to this, her voice is almost 
wholly unintelligible, and as their house was repairing 
all the summer, he was reduced, poor soul ! for many 
months to have no conversation but hers." 

The society of his good genius wrought 
the wonted spell upon Cowper's spirits for 
a little while. The winter evening readings 
were resumed, and Jonathan Wild, with 
other cheerful books forwarded by Samuel 
Rose, were enjoyed and discussed. 

The familiar demon descended upon his 
prey with sullen power in January. For 
six dreary days the possessed man sat "still 



Familiar Demon 215 

and silent as death," in his study, refusing 
all nourishment other than a morsel of 
bread dipped in wine and forced upon him 
three times a day by his attendants. This 
self-imposed "penance for his sins" was 
interrupted by his physician's kindly strata- 
gem. Mrs. Unwin was, with some difficulty, 
so far aroused as to become his accomplice. 
It was "a fine morning," she quavered 
forth, and she "thought it would do her 
good to walk." 

"Cowper immediately arose, took her 
by the arm, — and the spell which hird fixed 
him to his chair was broken. This appears 
to be the last instance in which her influ- 
ence over him was exerted for good." 
Hayley, summoned by Lady Hesketh, joined 
his efforts to hers to induce the sufferers to 
try the effect of a removal from Weston to 
Norfolk — to the seashore — to any place 
that promised change of thought and 
healthful air for the worn-out bodies. 

" He now does nothing but walk incessantly back- 
wards and forwards either in his study or his bed-cham- 
ber," Lady Hesketh wrote to a confidential correspondent, 
May 5, 1795. "Can I find room to tell you Mrs. Un- 
win had another attack the seventeenth of last month ? 
It affected her face and voice only. She is a dreadful 



216 William Cowper 

spectacle ; yet within two days she has made our 
wretched cousin drag her 'round the garden." 

Mr. John Johnson, Cowper's kinsman, 
better known through the poet's letters as 
*' Johnny of Norfolk," came to Hayley's 
and Lady Hesketh's help, and the difficult 
task was effected of removing the partially 
sane pair from the asylum to which they 
clung. They were assured confidently that 
they should return within a few weeks, 
perhaps within a few days. But Cowper 
pencilled, July 22, upon the white wooden 
shutter of his bedroom, what showed that 
he, at least, was not deceived on this head. 

" Farewell, dear scenes forever closed to me ; 
Oh! for what sorrows must 1 now exchange ye ! " 

The day of departure was probably de- 
layed for some reason, for below July 22 
is set down in the same minute characters, 
—28, lyps. 

Lady Hesketh had remained, unshrink- 
ingly, at her post until now. 

The visitor to Weston Lodge (otherwise 
Weston Underwood) may still see the 
clumsy couplet upon the inner blind of the 
window overlooking the gardens conse- 



Departure from Weston Lodge 2 1 7 

crated by the poet's work and walks during 
nearly ten years. At the top of the second 
garden is a summer-house erected upon the 
site of that constructed by "Sam," who, 
*' laying his own noddle and the carpenter's 
noddle together, built a thing fit for Stow's 
Gardens. 

Beware of buildings ! I intended 

Rough logs and thatch, and thus it ended." 

Below the lame couplet upon the blind, 
between which and our eyes a slow mist 
gathers, as we look from the peaceful bow- 
ers and plantations back to the faint pen- 
cillings, other lines were inscribed by the 
same hand at the same time. A stupid 
housemaid scrubbed them away, a hundred 
years ago. 

" Me miserable ! how could 1 escape 
Infinite wrath and infinite despair ? 
Whom Death, Earth, Heaven and Hell consigned to 

ruin, 
Whose friend was God, but God swore not to aid me.'" 

"Sam," the faithful henchman, copied 
them from the shutter after his master had 
gone. 

Among the halting-places made by Mr. 



2i8 William Cowper 

Johnson in his pious pilgrimage with his 
helpless patients was the house of Mrs. 
Bodham, the donor of '*My Mother's 
Picture." Everywhere the travellers were 
welcomed affectionately, and when they 
reached Mundesley on the Norfolk coast, 
Cowper was so nearly restored to reason 
as to begin "the last series of his letters to 
Lady Hesketh." For a while he constrains 
himself to write of what he sees, and to 
avoid talk of what he feels. Through this 
surface composure there breaks up, from 
time to time, a hot jet of bitter waters 
from the tormented depths: 

" 1 have been tossed like a ball into a far country 
from which there is no rebound for me." 

"With Mrs. Unwin's respects, I remain the forlorn 
and miserable being I was when I wrote last." 

" Oh wretch ! to whom death and life are alike 
impossible ! " 

"All my themes of misery may be summed in one 
word ; — He who made me regrets that ever He did. 
Many years have passed since 1 learned this terrible truth 
from Himself." 

Mr. and Mrs. Powley came from their 
Yorkshire parsonage to visit Mrs. Unwin 
while she was in Mundesley, and Cowper 
listened without objection to the chapter 



Mrs. UnwiiVs Death 21Q 

from the Bible read by Mr. Powley to his 
mother-in-law every morning before she 
left her bed. Cowper's physical condition 
was undoubtedly improved by the sea air 
and change of scene, and Hayley's hopes 
arose high. 

"God grant," he says, "that he may soon smile 
upon us all, like the sun new risen. 1 have a strong 
persuasion on that subject, and feel convinced myself 
(I know not how) that the good old lady's flight to 
heaven will prove the precursor of his perfect mental 
recovery." 

Late in October, 1 796, the party left the 
seashore for Mr. Johnson's home in East 
Durham, a Norfolk market town. Mrs. 
Unwin was confined to her bed from the 
first of December, and on the morning of 
the seventeenth of that month was known 
by all to be dying. Nothing had been said 
to Cowper of her condition, but his first 
question of the servant who opened his 
blinds on that morning was — " Is there life 
above-stairs ? " 

At the usual hour for his morning visit, 
he went to the dying woman's room, and 
remained until noon. He had been below- 
stairs but half an hour when the news was 



220 William Cowper 

brought to Mr. Johnson, who was reading 
Fanny Burney's Camilla aloud to him, that 
Mrs. Unwin was dead. 

Cowper received the news " not without 
emotion," but astonished his kinsman by 
asking him presently to "goon reading." 
"This was no sane composure," Southey 
informs us unnecessarily. Soon the sur- 
vivor was seized with a horror of his 
friend's premature burial. 

"She is not actually dead. She will 
come to life again in the grave and undergo 
the agonies of suffocation, and on my 
account. I am the occasion of all that she, 
or any other creature upon earth, ever did, 
or could, suffer." 

When, in compliance with his request, 
his kinsman led him to the death-room, he 
stood gazing upon the marble face for 
some moments, then "flung himself to the 
other side of the room with a passionate 
expression of feeling." 

Her name never passed his lips again. 

In 1797, the cloud of listless despondency 
lifted so far from Cowper's spirit that he 
yielded to an artful temptation placed in 
his way by Johnson in the shape of sundry 
commentaries upon Homer left upon Cow- 



The Castaway 221 

per's table, all open at the place where his 
translation had stopped, a year before. 

He settled down to work upon the revi- 
sion of his own manuscript, and wrought 
patiently at it until March, 1799. On the 
20th of March he wrote his last and saddest 
poem — The Castaway: 

Obscurest night involved the sky ; 

Th' Atlantic billows roar'd, 
When such a destin'd wretch as I, 

Wash'd headlong from on board, 
Of friends, of hope, of all bereft, 
His floating home forever left. 

No braver chief could Albion boast, 

Than he with whom he went, 
Nor ever ship left Albion's coast. 

With warmer wishes sent. 
He loved them both, but both in vain, 
Nor him beheld, nor her again. 

Not long beneath the 'whelming brine, 

Expert to swim, he lay ; 
Nor soon he felt his strength decline. 

Or courage die away ; 
But waged with death a lasting strife, 
Supported by despair of life. 

He shouted : nor his friends had failed 

To check the vessel's course. 
But so the furious blast prevail'd, 

That, pitiless perforce. 
They left their outcast mate behind, 
And scudded still before the wind. 



909 



William Cowper 

Some succour yet they could afford, 

And such as storms allow, 
The cask, the coop, the floated cord, 

Delay'd not to bestow ; 
But he (they knew) nor ship, nor shore, 
Whate'er they gave, should visit more. 

Nor, cruel as it seem'd, could he 
Their haste himself condemn, 

Aware that flight in such a sea 
Alone could rescue them ; 

Yet bitter felt it still to die 

Deserted, and his friends so nigh. 

He long survives, who lives an hour 

In ocean, self-upheld : 
And so long he, with unspent power, 

His destiny repell'd ; 
And ever, as the minutes flew, 
Entreated help, or cried — " Adieu ! " 

At length, his transient respite past, 

His comrades, who before 
Had heard his voice in every blast, 

Could catch the sound no more. 
For then, by toil subdued, he drank 
The stifling wave and then he sank. 

No poet wept him ; but the page 

Of narrative sincere. 
That tells his name, his worth, his age. 

Is wet with Anson's tear. 
And tears by bards or heroes shed 
Alike immortalise the dead. 



The End 22^ 

1 therefore purpose not, or dream, 

Descanting on his fate, 
To give the melancholy theme 

A more enduring date : 
But misery still delights to trace 
Its semblance in another's case. 

No voice divine the storm allay'd, 

No light propitious shone. 
When, snatched from all effectual aid, 

We perish'd — each alone : 
But I, beneath a rougher sea, 
And w^helmed in deeper gulfs than he. 

The end of the long, inscrutable agony 
was drawing on, slowly but surely. No 
man ever had more devoted friends, and in 
his last months he found in his attendant, 
Miss Perowne, "one of those excellent be- 
ings whom Nature seems to have formed 
expressly for the purpose of alleviating the 
sufferings of the afflicted." She could in- 
duce him to take medicine he would receive 
from no one else, and Mr. Johnson seconded 
herewith an equal portion of unvaried 
tenderness and unshaken fidelity." 

January, 1800, passed without sensible 
aggravation of his gravest symptoms, and 
Hayley's rekindling hopes were fanned by 
the receipt (February i) of a revised copy 
of certain lines of the Iliad as translated 



224 William Cowper 

by Cowper, " written in a firm but delicate 
hand," in fulfilment of Hayley's desire that 
one word should be altered. 

Cowper never took pen in hand again. 
Dropsy set in early in February. Before 
the end of March, he kept his room all day, 
and, until after breakfast, his bed. 

*' How do you feel ? " asked the physician 
one day. 

"Feel!" with a look of untranslatable 
meaning. '' I feel unutterable despair. ' ' 

Lady Hesketh was too infirm in health to 
come to him. Hayley was in close attend- 
ance upon his own dying son. Samuel 
Rose hastened to Cowper's bedside, but 
his presence brought no comfort. 

The 19th of April dawned upon eyes 
that Mr. Johnson was sure would never see 
the sun rise again. Breaking the crust of 
reserve, he spoke to his kinsman of the 
certainly approaching change, and urged 
upon him the truth that " in the world to 
which he was hastening, a merciful Re- 
deemer had prepared unspeakable happiness 
for all His children, . . . and therefore 
for him." 

Cowper heard the exhortation half 
through, then burst into a vehement en- 



The End 22s 

treaty that his kinsman would not seek to 
delude him with false hopes to which he 
could not listen. For five days longer he 
lay silent — never sullen — but calm in the 
apathy of despair. If he suffered physically, 
he made no moan, and the blinded spirit 
had ceased to grope in the rayless night 
enveloping it. 

Once, during the night preceding his 
dissolution, he spoke. Miss Perowne, 
finding his pulse low and his feet and hands 
cold, would have had him swallow a cordial. 
He put it aside, resolutely : 

"What can it signify ? " 

His tongue never framed another sen- 
tence. He passed away in sleep, without 
sound or struggle, on the afternoon of April 
25, in the sixty-ninth year of his age. 

Mr. Johnson has left on record a sentence 
that falls upon our hearts like the calm of 
a summer sunset after a day of hurrying 
clouds, sobbing gusts, and wild rains: 

''From that moment, 'till the coifm was 
closed, the expression into which his coun- 
tenance had settled was that of calmness 
and composure, mingled, as it were, with 
holy surprise. ' ' 

Mr. Wright sets, in close connection with 



226 William Cowper 

this blessed clause, the fact that Cowper 
believed in the return of disembodied spirits 
to the earth. 

" In this sense, I suppose," he had said to Newton, 
" there is a heaven upon earth at all times, and that the 
disembodied spirit may find a peculiar joy arising from 
the contemplation of those places it was formerly con- 
versant with, and^ so far at least, be reconciled to a 
world it was once so weary of, as to use it in the 
delightful way of thankful recollection." 

May we not believe, and thank God for 
the fancy, that the sweet mother who had 
so long had all her other children with her 
in Heaven was graciously permitted to 
bear to this ''afflicted soul, tossed with 
tempest, and not comforted," the tidings 
that he was a partaker in the " unspeakable 
happiness " he had despaired of attaining ? 
Did the welcome to the joy of the Lord he 
had never ceased to love while he believed 
himself shut out forever from His presence, 
awaken the " holy surprise " which brought 
back youth and comeliness to the face 
marred by the awful and mysterious sor- 
row, as fearsome as it is incomprehensible 
to us ? 

Lady Hesketh, faithful unto death, and 
beyond it, erected above her cousin the 



The End 227 

monument in Dereham Church. Two 
anonymous friends placed there a tablet 
to the memory of Mrs. Unwin, who sleeps 
at his side. 

Hayley wrote the inscription upon each : 

IN MEMORY OF 

WILLIAM COWPER, ESa 

BORN IN HERTFORDSHIRE, 1 73 I. 

BURIED IN THIS CHURCH, 180O. 

Ye, who with warmth the public triumph feel 

Of talents dignified by sacred zeal, 

Here, to devotion's bard devoutly just. 

Pay your fond tribute due to Cowper's dust. 

England, exulting in his spotless fame, 

Ranks with her dearest sons his favourite name. 

Sense, fancy, wit, suffice not all to raise 

So clear a title to affection's praise: 

His highest honours to the heart belong, 

his virtues form'd the magic of his song. 

IN MEMORY OF 

MARY, 

WIDOW OF THE REV. MORLEY UNWIN, 

AND MOTHER OF 

THE REV. WILLIAM CAWTHORNE UNWIN. 

BORN AT ELY, 1 724. 

BURIED IN THIS CHURCH, 1 796. 

Trusting in God, with all her heart and mind, 

This woman proved magnanimously kind ; 

Endured affliction's desolating hail, 

And watched a poet through misfortune's vale. 

Her spotless dust angelic guards defend, 

It is the dust of Unwin, Cowper's friend. 

That single title in itself is fame. 

For all who read his verse revere her name. 



CHAPTER XVIII 
cowper's writings 

As literary fame is made and maintained 
in our age of rush and sensational 
novelties, it is hard to comprehend the place 
occupied in the world of letters, a century 
ago, by the shy, morbid Cowper. His 
personality had nothing to do with his 
literary career. In fact, the two were so 
utterly dissociated that the reader of his 
Life cannot link the portrait therein depicted 
with virile lines which have set him among 
the masters of English verse ; and they are 
disposed to receive doubtfully the asser- 
tion that he was the popular poet of his 
generation. 

The Olney Hymns and the domestic 
scenes — without parallel in grace, tender- 
ness, and feeling — given to us in The Task 
made him welcome and beloved in every 
228 



Cowper's Writings 22Q 

Christian home; the perfect structure of 
his sentences, the aptness of his imagery, 
the simplicity and force of his diction, have 
made him a classic, and a model to students 
who would also be scholars. 

His writings in prose and in poetry will 
remain "wells of English undefiled " while 
authors acknowledge the duty they owe to 
our noble vernacular. As a humble learner 
in this school, I shall consider myself amply 
repaid for the labour bestowed upon the 
preparation of this book, if I can divert the 
attention of one admirer of turgid and 
erotic modern verse to the purer pleasures to 
be drawn from perusal of the works of one 
whose genius was never perverted to base 
uses, with whom Art was never divorced 
from Conscience. 

To this end I append a partial list of 
publications that appeared in Cowper's life- 
time. His posthumous works added little 
to his reputation, and are interesting merely 
as side-lights upon his individual history. 

Olney Hymns (1779). These have been 
sung around the world and translated into 
fifty foreign languages and dialects. 

Anti-Thelyphthora (1781). A satirical 
reply to Martin Madan's Thelyphthora. It 



230 William Cowper 

was issued anonymously, and never claimed 
openly by Cowper. He is said to have 
spoken of it as ''a mistake, if not a folly." 

Poems, by William Coii'per, Esq. , of the 
Middle Temple (1782). 

Tale of Three Pet Hares, Puss, Tiney and 
Bess. This first appeared in the June 
number of Gentleman's Magazine (1785). 

The Task — A Poem in Six Books; Tiro- 
cinium, and John Gilpin, in one volume 

(■785)- 

Translations from Homer ( 1 79 1 ) . 

Poems : containing Lines to My Mother's 
Picture, Dog and Water Lily, and other 
short poems of less note (1798). 

Essays written (17^6) for The Connois- 
seur, and other periodicals, were exhumed 
after the author became famous, as were 
his early translations of Horace, The 
Odyssey, etc. 

A thin volume of Early Productions was 
issued in 1825, a quarter-century after his 
death. The circumstances attending the 
publication are given in full in former 
chapters of this Biography. 



INDEX 



A 
Anne, Queen, 9 

Austen, Lady, 142-147, 149, i=ii, 1^5, 155-157, 106, 
170, 170, 189 

B 

Balls, Mrs., 202, 20; 

Barbauld, Mrs., 189 

Birkhampstead, Great, i, 3, 9, 10, 32 

Bodham, Mrs. Anne, 17, 115, 218 

Bourne, Vincent, 20, 21 

Bristol, 152, 156 

Bull, Rev. William, 137, 138, 177, 192 

Burney, Fanny, 220 

C 

Cambridge, 27,91, 107 
Camilla, 220 
Carter, Mrs., 190 
Castaway, The, 221 
Catfield, 17 
Chesters, The, i 74 
Chronicle, The St. James, ;o 
231 



2^1 2 Index 

Churchill, 30, 86 

Clifton, 142 

Coleman, Dick, 14s 

Coleman, Mr., 30 

Connoisseur, The, 31 

Conyers, Dr., 95, 96 

Cotton, Dr., 61-63, 65-67, 70, 82, 116 

Cowper, Anne, 1-3, 13, im 

Cowper, Ashley, 24-27, 37, 71, 72, 83, 122, 161 

Cowper, Colonel and Mrs., 87, los 

Cowper, Harriet, 25, 38 

Cowper, Rev. John (D.D.), i, 2, g, 11, 2^, ;i 

Cowper, Rev. John (Jr.), 3, 7, 27, 35, 54, SS 57, 63- 
65, 72, 86, 106, 121, 197 

Cowper, Major, 46, 47, 53, 54,67, 69, 70, 78, 183 

Cowper, Spencer, 9 

Cowper, Theodora, 25-29, 38-40, 58, 74, 166, 170, 172 

Cowper, William, birth, infancy, and childhood, i-ii ; 
school-days, 12-23 ; law-studies, love-affair, and 
father's death, 24-34 \ hereditary glooms, Dr. John 
Donne's influence, first lunacy, 35-49 ; second lun- 
acy and attempted suicide, 50-61 ; life in asylum, 
recovery, and conversion, 62-75 ; life in Hunting- 
don, first meeting with the Unwins, 76-90 ; John 
Newton and Olney, 91-103 ; Olney Hymns, death 
of John Cowper, third attack of insanity, 104-1 19; 
the "Fatal Dream," convalescence, first volume 
of poems, 120-133; Lady Austen's influence, 1^4- 
148 ; writes The Task, and renews communication 
with Lady Hesketh, 149-160 ; gifts from " Anony- 
ma," and literary life at "Orchard Side," 161- 
172 ; removal to Weston Lodge, 173-184; death 
of William Unwin, Homer and hard work, 18s- 



index 233 



Cowper, William — Continued 

194; calm, busy life at Weston Lodge, Samuel 
Teedon, 195-209; Mrs. Unwin's death, Cowper's 
last days, 210-227 ; list of published works, 228- 
230 

Cowper, Sir William, 9 

D 

Dartmouth, Lord, 22, 170 

Dereham Church, 227 

Dickens, Charles, 13 

Disney, Mr., 16 

Disney, Mrs., 16 

Disneys, The, 17 

Donne, Anne, 17, 42 

Donne, Castres, 1 7 

Donne, Elizabeth, 17 

Donne, Harriet, 17 

Donne, Rev. John (D.D.), i, 2, 42, 4s, 1 15, 121 

Donne, Roger, 1,17 

Durham, East, 219 

E 

Eartham, 208, 210 

Edgeworth, Miss, 13 

Ely, 227 

G 

Gayhurst, 178, 181 

George the First, 9 

George the Royal, 147 

Gilpin, John, 146, 157, is8, 176 

Gosse, Edmund, 43_, 44, 115 

Grimstone, 91, 92 

Grindon, Mr., 191 

Guinea Field, The, 145 



234 Index 

H 

Hastings, 22 

Haweis, Rev. Mr., os, 96 

Hayley, William, 153, 207,208, 211, 219, 223, 224, 
227 

Henriade, The, 35 

Hertfordshire, 227 

Hesketh, Lady, 25, 38, 48, 58, 60, 64, 67, 69, 72-74, 
102-104, 125, 140, 147, 155, 157, 160, 161, 165- 
167, 169, 170, 174, 180-182, 185-188, 190, 193, 
195, 197, iq8, 201, 214-216, 218, 224, 226 

Hesketh, Sir Thomas, 60, 69, 72, 73, 123, 159 

Hill, Joseph, 70, 84, 86, 90, q;, 104, 10=;, 108, 121, 182 

Homer, 168, 182, 188-191, 198, 211, 220 

Huntingdon, 70, 76, 92, 94 

I 

Iliad, The, 35, 168, 196, 198, 203, 223 

J 

Johnson, Mr. John, 216, 218-220, 223-22!? 
Johnston (publisher), 131, 132, 208 

K 

King, Mrs., 197, 199, 206 

L 

" Lavinia," 152 

Lloyd, 86 

London, 2, 24, 44, 49, 88, 108, 124, 130, 141, 143, 178, 

182 
Ludham Hall, i 



Jidex 235 

M 



Madan, Martin, 56, 57, 66, 87, 88, 91, 95 

Madans, The, 105 

Margate, 48, 49 

Milton, 183, 204, 206, 208 

Mundesley, 218 

Mungo, 1 70 

My Mary, Address to, 213 



N 



Newton, Mrs., 124, 193 

Newton, Rev. John, 86, 95-100, 102, 103, 105, ioq, 
no, 113, 114, 116-118, 124, 126, 128, 1^1, 132, 
134, 136, 141, 142, 170, 173, 176-181, 184, 187, 
188, 190, 192, 200, 201, 210, 211, 226 

Newtons, The, 145 

Nicholls, Dr., 40, 41, 200 

Norfolk, County of, i, 91, 215, 218, 219 



Odyssey, The, 36, 198, 199, 203 

Ohiey Hymns, no, 124 

Olney, Manor of, 22 

Olney, Town of, 95-98, 104, 105, 116, 120, 123-125, 
130, 136, 140-143, 146, isi-is;, 1SS-IS7, 166, 
167, 169-171, 173-175, 178, 179, J8i, 183, 190, 
191 , 196, 204, 212 

Olney, The Vicarage of, 138, 145, 170, 177 

Orchard Side, 135, 145, 174, 183, 185 

Ouse, The, g6, 152, 184 



236 Index 

p 

Peasant's Nest, The, 164 
Perowne, Miss, 223, 225 
Powley, Mrs., 129, 135, 152, 218 
Powley, Rev. Mr., 129, 219 
Powleys, The, 136 
" Puss, Tiny, and Bess," 118, 164 



Richmond, Duke of, 20 

Robin, The gardener, 6, 1 3 

Rose, Samuel, 195, 197, 198, 214, 224 

Russell, Sir William, 22, 38 



Scott, Mrs., 144, 156 

Scott, Rev. Thomas, 136, 144, 151, 156 

Scotts, The, 145 

Silver End, 143 

Smith, Professor Goldwin, 9, 12, 74, 96, 105, 108, 131 

•34, «57 
Sofa, The, 147, 148 

Southey, Robert, 32, 78, 108, 134, 135, 205 
Spinney, The, 143, 149 
St. Albans, 6i, 63, 64, 67, 76, 82, 100, 117 
St. Paul's, Dean of, 2, 42, 1 14, 115 



Task, The, 147, 150, 155, 156, 174, 197 
Teedon, Samuel, 204-206, 209, 212 
Temple, The, 30 
Throckmortons, The, 174, 17s, 178, 188, 196 



Index 



2^7 



u 

Unwin, Miss, 94 

Unwin, Mrs. Mary, 80-82, 85, 86, 88, 92, 94-96, 113, 
114, 117, 125-128, 134-142, 144, 149, 150, 1S3, 
159, 160, 166-168, 171-174, 176, 180, 185, 187, 
189, 191-193, 198-200, 202, 203, 205-212, 215, 
218-220, 227 

Unwin, Rev. Morley, 80, 84, 91, 92, 227 

Unwin, William Cawthorne, 31, 79-81, Q4, 121, 129, 
130, 133, 143-146, 149, 152, 157, 169, 178, 18s, 
186, 227 

Unwins, The, 71, 76, 80, 82, 83, 8^5, 87, 92, 142 



W 



Walton, Izaak, 2 

Westminster School, 17, 19-22, 24, ^o, 40 

Weston Hall, 174, 175, 184, 196 

Weston Lodge, 174, 175, 181, 207, 210, 215 

Weston Underwood, 175, 182, 183, 186, 197, 206, 214 

Wright, Mr, Thomas, 29, 120, 176, 200, 206, 225 

Wrightes, The, 174 




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BELLES=LETTRES 



Historic Towns of New England 

Edited by Lyman P. Powell. With introduction 
by George P. Morris. With i6o illustrations. 

s\ $3.50. 

"The authors of the Boston papers have succeeded in present- 
ing a wonderfully interesting account in which none of the more 
important events have been omitted. . . . The quaint Cape 
Cod Towns that have clung tenaciously to their old-fashioned 
ways are described with a characteristic vividness by Miss Bates. 
. . . The other papers are presented in a delightfully attrac- 
tive manner that will serve to make more deeply cherished the 
memory of the places described." — N'ew Y'ork Times. 

Historic Towns of the Middle States 

Edited by Lym.\n P, Powell. With introduction by 
Albert Shaw. With about 160 illustrations. 8°. 

Some Colonial Homesteads 

And Their Stories. By Marion Harland. With 
86 illustrations. 8", $3.00. 

"A notable book, dealing with early American days. . . . 
The name of the author is a guarantee not only of the greatest 
possible accuracy as to facts, but of attractive treatment of themes 
absorbingly interesting in themselves, . . . the book is of 
rare elegance in paper, typography, and binding." — Rochester 
Democrat-Chronicle. 

More Colonial Homesteads 

And Their Stories. By Marion Harland. Fully 
illustrated. 8°. 

Where Ghosts Walk 

The Haunts of Familiar Characters in History and 
Literature. By Marion Harland, author of 
" Some Colonial Homesteads," etc. With 33 
illustrations. 8°, $2.50. 
" In this volume fascinating pictures are thrown upon the screen 
so rapidly that we have not time to have done with our admira- 
tion for one before the next one is encountered. . . . Long- 
forgotten heroes live once more ; we recall the honored dead_ to 
life again, and the imagination runs riot. Travel of this kind 
does not weary. It fascinates." -iV^?w York Times. 



G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, New York and London 






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